Ghislaine Maxwell, in DOJ meetings, rejected accuser’s claim of sexual encounter with Prince Andrew
Maxwell met with a top DOJ official for a two-day interview session last month.
Ghislaine Maxwell claimed in an interview with the U.S. Department of Justice that an infamous photo of her with Prince Andrew and an American teenager is fake and that the alleged sexual encounter between the British royal and the girl could not have happened at her London home.
“What’s an even bigger word than b——t?” Maxwell asked rhetorically.
“I believe that this whole thing was manufactured,” Maxwell said, according to a transcript and audio of the conversation released on Friday by the DOJ.
Maxwell — the former companion and convicted co-conspirator of sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein — made the comments during a highly-unusual interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche last month in Tallahassee, Florida.
The meeting was billed in advance by Blanche — the top deputy to Attorney General Pamela Bondi — as an opportunity to determine if Maxwell had “information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims,” according to a statement posted to social media by the DOJ in late July.
But during the two-day interview session, Maxwell said she did not hear or witness any improper or illegal activity by any of the prominent people previously linked to Epstein.
Yet Maxwell was also afforded significant time with Blanche to present her defenses to charges that already led to her conviction for sex-trafficking, and to address allegations raised by some Epstein victims that she was effectively a “‘madam” to the world’s most notorious sex offender.
Virginia Roberts Giuffre holds a photo of herself at age 16, when she says Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein began abusing her sexually.
Emily Michot/Miami Herald via Getty Images
“I’m going to tell you right now. I’m so happy to tell you,” Maxwell said as the subject turned to the claims about Prince Andrew made by Virginia Giuffre, the young woman in the photograph. The DOJ redacted Giuffre’s name from the transcript and audio recording, but from the content of the interview it’s clear she is the person being discussed.
“I’m, like, excited. I’m beyond excited,” she said, according to the transcript of the nine-hour interview session.
Giuffre — who died in April by apparent suicide — had alleged in interviews and legal filings that she had been trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell to several of their high-profile associates, including Prince Andrew on three occasions — twice before she turned 18.
Her family, in a statement last month, called Maxwell “a predator who thought only of herself, she destroyed the lives of girls and young women without conscience.”
The first of the encounters with the prince, Giuffre alleged, took place at Maxwell’s London home in March of 2001, after she was taken by Maxwell to a nightclub for dancing with Andrew.
“In the car, Ghislaine tells me that I have to do for Andrew what I do for Jeffrey, and that just made me sick,” Giuffre told BBC Panorama in a 2019 interview.
Maxwell had previously denied the allegations about Prince Andrew in a deposition in a civil case filed by Giuffre, which was settled in 2017, prior to trial. Her comments in the interview with Blanche, however, represent her most detailed attempt to refute her accuser’s account.
“What I can absolutely categorically say is that I never at any time set Andrew up to have relations with her or any other human being ever,” she said.
Maxwell told Blanche that the timing of that trip coincided with her mother Elisabeth’s 80th birthday and that she had been at her brother’s home in the countryside that weekend for a family celebration. The clothes she is wearing in the photograph, she said, matched what she wore to her mother’s party.
“I believe it’s literally a fake photo,” Maxwell said.
Giuffre, in her 2019 interview with the BBC, insisted that the photo was genuine. She contended Prince Andrew and his defenders were presenting “ridiculous excuses” to claim otherwise.
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“I’m calling BS on this,” she said in the interview. “He knows what happened. I know what happened. There’s only one of us telling the truth, and I know it’s me.”
Maxwell claimed to have no specific memory of Prince Andrew and Giuffre being at her London residence, but could not discount the possibility that he had come by to visit.
“I don’t have any memory of that,” Maxwell told Blanche. “The issue is, could Andrew have come to the house to see me or see Epstein, and say ‘Hi,’ and she had been there? Yes. I can’t say that that didn’t happen.”
Flight logs for Epstein’s planes — created by one of Epstein’s pilots and submitted as court exhibits — show a trip on a Gulfstream jet from Palm Beach to Paris, Spain, Morocco and London in early March 2001. Among the listed passengers are “JE, “GM,” and Virginia Roberts, as Giuffre was then known.
Blanche did not ask Maxwell why a 17-year old girl was along for the ride. But in another portion of the interview Maxwell alleged that Giuffre — whose troubled youth included allegations of sexual exploitation by an older man before she met Epstein — had effectively ignited Epstein’s obsessive interest in sexualized massages with underage girls. She claimed that Epstein liked Giuffre and began to travel with her shortly after meeting her in 2000.
Giuffre’s family has been highly critical of the government’s decision to meet with Maxwell, who was initially charged by federal prosecutors with perjury for alleged false statements she made during the litigation with Giuffre. Those charges were dropped after Maxwell’s conviction on the sex-trafficking charges.
“If our sister could speak today, she would be most angered by the fact that the government is listening to a known perjurer; a woman who repeatedly lied under oath and will continue to do so as long as it benefits her position,” her family said in their statement last month.
“Ghislaine Maxwell is a monster who deserves to rot in prison for the rest of her life,” the family said.
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Maxwell told Blanche that the primary purpose of the March 2001 trip was for Epstein and his decorator to visit a house in Marrakesh, Morocco, and for Maxwell to be in England for her mother’s birthday weekend. According to the pilot’s logs, the plane left Morocco and touched down in London on a Friday and departed for the U.S. two days later.
“And I suspect now that that trip was planned all around the fact that I … was going to be in London no matter what for my mom’s 80th birthday at my brother’s house in the country,” she said.
Maxwell’s efforts to refute Giuffre’s allegations focused specifically on the layout of her house, which she described as “tiny.”
“It’s … a gorgeous little place, but it is the size of a nut,” she said. “It was the little poor man’s home behind the rich man’s home.”
Giuffre had alleged in the BBC interview that her encounter with the prince had started in the home’s bathroom before moving to the bedroom.
But Maxwell contended that it was not conceivable for two people to have sexual relations in the cramped bathroom.
“Her description of whatever the two people were doing in that tub, that wouldn’t work,” she said. “The bathroom itself is so small, you can’t lie flat on the floor. So it couldn’t happen on the floor because you physically can’t.”
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Maxwell claimed she had put her brother in the tub at one point to see what would happen and that he looked like “sausage in like a very tight skin.”
Maxwell’s brother Ian had previously sought to discredit Giuffre’s account by releasing to a British newspaper a staged photograph of two people — wearing paper masks depicting Prince Andrew and Giuffre — sitting together knee-to-knee in the home’s bathtub.
“I am releasing my photographs now because the truth needs to come out,” he told The Telegraph in 2023. “They show conclusively that the bath is too small for any sort of sex frolicking.
In her interview with Blanche, Maxwell contradicted Prince Andrew’s assertion that she had introduced him to Epstein, claiming that Epstein and the royal met independently of her.
“It would never have occurred to me to introduce them,” Maxwell said, describing the two men as like “chalk and cheese” — a British idiom akin to “apples and oranges.”
“I couldn’t imagine them being friends,” Maxwell said, but added that they developed “a really good relationship.”
Giuffre alleged that she was trafficked to Prince Andrew for sex on two other occasions at Epstein’s homes in New York and the U.S. Virgin Islands. During the discussion with Blanche, Maxwell indicated that they would “come to that” later, but the subject did not arise again before the end of the two-day interview session.
Undated trial evidence image obtained December 8, 2021, from the US District Court for the Southern District of New York shows British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell and US financier Jeffrey Epstein in Queen’s log cabin at Balmoral.
US District Court for the Southern District of New York/AFP via Getty Images
During the litigation between Giuffre and Maxwell, another woman alleged in a sworn deposition that she was groped by Prince Andrew at Epstein’s New York home, while she and Giuffre were sitting with the prince for a photo. The woman said she did not know where Giuffre or the prince went after that.
Prince Andrew said in an interview with the BBC in 2019 that he could not recall ever meeting Giuffre and denied having any sexual contact with her. Buckingham Palace, on behalf of the prince, denied the other woman’s groping allegations.
Giuffre sued Andrew for sexual assault and battery in New York federal court in 2021, alleging that he had sex with her while “knowing that she was a sex-trafficking victim being forced to engage in sexual acts with him,” according to court records.
The prince “never sexually abused or assaulted Giuffre,” his attorneys wrote in a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. They described his accuser as a profiteer who had sold stories and photographs to the press and entered into secret settlements against her alleged abusers.
“Most people could only dream of obtaining the sums of money that Giuffre has secured for herself over the years. This presents a compelling motive for Giuffre to continue filing frivolous lawsuits against individuals such as Prince Andrew, whose sullied reputation is only the latest collateral damage of the Epstein scandal,” they wrote.
Three months later, Prince Andrew settled the lawsuit for an undisclosed sum.
“Prince Andrew has never intended to malign Ms. Giuffre’s character, and he accepts that she has suffered both as an established victim of abuse and as a result of unfair public attacks,” read a letter submitted to the court with the settlement notice.
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“It is known that Jeffrey Epstein trafficked countless young girls over many years. Prince Andrew regrets his association with Epstein, and commends the bravery of Ms. Giuffre and other survivors in standing up for themselves and others,” the letter said.
While he was embroiled in the lawsuit, Prince Andrew’s military affiliations and royal patronages were stripped, with the approval and agreement of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.
Maxwell’s meeting with Blanche came as the Trump administration continues to deal with the fallout of its decision not to release its investigative files on Epstein to the public, after repeated promises to do so. The administration indicated this week that the DOJ intends to start producing Epstein files to Congress in response to a subpoena from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Maxwell currently has a petition pending before the U.S. Supreme Court to review her conviction. The Department of Justice has opposed her petition to the high court.
Maxwell’s lawyers have publicly stated that they have not asked President Donald Trump for a pardon or commutation of her sentence, but indicated that Maxwell “would welcome any relief.” The 63-year old Maxwell, who has been incarcerated since her arrest in 2020, continued to insist during the interview with Blanche that she was not involved in the sexual exploitation of minors.
Giuffre relocated to Australia in 2002 and had remained there with her family for more than 20 years. Since her death in April, her family has spoken publicly on her behalf. The family has criticized the government’s decision to meet with Maxwell, who they argued cannot be trusted.
“The government and the President should never consider giving Ghislaine Maxwell any leniency. Maxwell destroyed many young lives, and she was convicted for only a fraction of the crimes she actually committed. She must remain in prison — anything less would go down in history as being one of the highest travesties of justice,” the family’s statement said.
