No, Ghislaine Maxwell didn’t remember where she met Virginia Roberts Giuffre, the woman who says she was recruited from a job at Mar-a-Lago as a teenager to become a Jeffrey Epstein masseuse and eventually a “sex slave.”
Yes, she recalled women hanging around Epstein’s pool topless, but it was not that common and they didn’t appear underage.
No, despite claims to the contrary, she didn’t participate in orgies with Epstein and young girls, including a specific allegation that involved the participation of a 13-year-old.
The back and forth comes from a 465-transcript released early Thursday of a deposition from 2016 given by Maxwell, the former partner and alleged recruiter for Jeffrey Epstein, who was arrested this past summer on sex-related charges. It shows how deeply intertwined she was in what authorities labeled the sexual trafficking of minors.
Ghislaine Maxwell, background right, is photographed with Virginia Giuffre and Prince Andrew. Giuffre claims Maxwell told her to have sex with the prince, an allegation both Andrew and Maxwell have denied. Giuffre was a teen at the time. Courtesy of Virginia Giuffre
Maxwell gave the deposition in a defamation lawsuit settled in 2017 brought against her by Epstein accuser Giuffre. Much of the court record remained hidden from public view until the Miami Herald first sued in April 2018 for dozens of documents in the case to be unsealed.
An earlier batch of filings was released last summer. While Giuffre supported release of the transcript in July, Maxwell’s lawyers had put up obstacle after obstacle to block its release.
That ended Thursday, after days of wrangling over redactions, when the transcript of the deposition became public. It showed the degree to which Maxwell was obstructive in her sworn testimony about her relationship with Epstein, although the detailed questioning by Giuffre’s lawyers outlined her intimate knowledge of his empire.
When asked if she had ever seen a girl under the age of 18 in Epstein’s home who wasn’t the child of a friend, Maxwell denied any knowledge.
“Again, I can’t testify to that because I have no idea what you are talking about,” Maxwell said…
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