Ghislaine Maxwell Says She Had No Contact With Epstein in 10 Years. Not True.
In the July 10 court filing protesting her confinement to jail for alleged sex trafficking offenses and perjury in relation to Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell’s attorneys claimed “she’d had no contact with Epstein for more than a decade.”
However, court filings from a prior civil case (Giuffre vs. Maxwell, 2015), unsealed last August on the day before Epstein’s death, include a log of email communications between Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein showing they contacted each other between January 6 and January 27, 2015.
Six of these seven email correspondences between Epstein and Maxwell were shielded from disclosure in the case by “common interest” and in one case, when Epstein attorney Alan Dershowitz was included on an email, it was shielded by attorney-client privilege. The email log appears to contradict Maxwell’s claim that she has not been in contact with Epstein for more than 10 years. (An attorney for Maxwell did not respond to requests for comment.)
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The first date of these exchanges, January 6, 2015, was three days after the publication of an explosive article in the Daily Mail picturing Prince Andrew with his arm around Epstein victim/survivor Virginia Roberts Giuffre and a smiling Ghislaine Maxwell (labeled as “the madame”) in the background.
Maxwell is alleged in various civil suits to have been an integral part, if not the principal organizer, of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking enterprise. While Maxwell’s recent arrest cites allegations of sex-trafficking activity occurring between 1994 and 1997, there are indications that she was present at Epstein’s Palm Beach estate during the 2002-2005 time frame of the alleged criminal activities outlined in his 2019 arrest and indictment—such as Maxwell receiving and leaving phone messages there, as well as the discovery of stationary paper with her name on it, and testimony from a butler that she had an office in the house.
According to Brad Edwards and Brittany Henderson, attorneys for numerous alleged victims of Epstein and Maxwell, when the 2005-06 Palm Beach police investigation of Epstein began, “she [Maxwell] became a ghost. She completely distanced herself from Epstein.” But prior to this, as Edwards and Henderson note in their new book on Epstein, the pair “slept in the same bed and traveled the world together in private planes... they were inseparable for almost two decades.”
For her part, Maxwell claimed to have broken off her romantic relationship with Epstein much earlier, in 2000. (In a recent court filing in the Virgin Islands against his estate, Maxwell claimed she worked for Epstein and/or his companies until 2006). In a 2007 character reference, sent by Epstein’s lawyers to support his bid in getting what one Florida prosecutor called “the deal of the century,” Epstein’s attorneys claimed that Epstein’s relationship with Maxwell “ended amicably around 2000.” They explained in the letter that Epstein’s need for frequent travel and his work arrangements “precluded a good married life with children” to explain why Maxwell and Epstein ended their relationship.
When Epstein’s Florida criminal case was hanging in the balance, Ghislaine wrote the following about Jeffrey Epstein:
My experience of Jeffrey, is of a thoughtful, kind, generous loving man, with a keen sense of humour and ready smile—a man of principles and values and a man of his word. If he made a promise, he would always follow through. In fact, I never saw him break a promise. He is disciplined in business and conscientious. A man always quick to help someone who is down, or to offer an opportunity to someone to pursue a dream or goal.
After their breakup, Maxwell claims to have continued on in 2001 as an employee of Epstein’s—she is listed aboard 84 flights on Epstein’s aircraft in 2001, and aboard 67 flights in 2002, but this dropped to 14 flights by 2006.
One particular flight included Epstein, Maxwell, Emmy Tayler, and Virginia Giuffre (then Roberts) on March 9, 2001. This flight landed at London’s Luton airport the night before Giuffre, then a 17-year-old girl from Florida, was allegedly trafficked to Prince Andrew. (Andrew and Maxwell have denied these claims.)
Flight logs kept by Epstein pilot David Rodgers show Maxwell regularly traveled on Epstein’s planes all the way through 2007 when Epstein’s pilots stopped writing down the names of his passengers in February of that year. This past weekend the Mail on Sunday published an article citing Maxwell’s claim she did not see Epstein in person after 2005. However, logs from Epstein’s pilots indicate Maxwell flew to Paris on Epstein’s Boeing 727 on his 54th birthday in 2007.
In a 2016 deposition, Sigrid McCawley, an attorney for Epstein and Maxwell’s alleged victims, asked Maxwell if she ever saw a girl under age 18 at Jeffrey Epstein’s home that was not the child of a friend. Maxwell said, “Again, I can’t testify to that because I have no idea what you are talking about.” When asked if Maxwell hired girls to perform sexual massages, Maxwell said, “I don’t hire girls like that,” and McCawley asked Maxwell to specify what she meant by “girls like that.” Maxwell responded, in part, “You are asking if I hired somebody to do what, I don’t know what you are talking about.” Later in the deposition, in an apparent moment of frustration, Maxwell began banging on the table for which she later apologized.
Yet the current charges in her July 2020 indictment appear to begin with Maxwell recruiting a 14-year-old Jane Doe from Michigan’s Interlochen music camp in 1994, once attended by Epstein when he was a teenager. In the years to follow, according to one victim/survivor, Maxwell would even prowl Central Park looking for young girls to recruit for Epstein’s abuse.
Maxwell has filed that she “vigorously denies the charges, intends to fight them, and is entitled to the presumption of innocence” and her attorneys have stated on the record that they believe the government’s criminal case is “meritless.” Maxwell’s bail hearing is set for Tuesday, July 14.
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