Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, repeatedly denied any involvement in facilitating a sex-trafficking operation that brought young girls to the disgraced financier’s Florida and New York homes to be sexually abused, according to a 465-page document unsealed Thursday.
The lengthy transcript of a seven-hour deposition taken in 2016 is among more than 2,000 pages of documents that started to trickle out last year after a federal appeals court ordered the unsealing of documents in a defamation case brought by Virginia Giuffre.
Giuffre claimed that Maxwell recruited her when she was 17 years old to be sexually abused by Epstein from 1999 to 2002. She said she became Epstein’s “sex slave” and accused Maxwell of enabling his bad behavior.
Throughout the deposition, Maxwell called Giuffre a liar multiple times, saying she “lied 100% about absolutely everything that took place in the first meeting.”
Maxwell also claimed that she was never in the room when Giuffre gave Epstein a massage and could not comment on what happened but alleged that Giuffre was lying.
“(Giuffre) has lied repeatedly, often and is just an awful fantasist,” Maxwell said. She later called Giuffre’s claim that she recruited other teenagers to perform sensual massages on Epstein “absurd.”
“Her entire story is one giant tissue of lies,” Maxwell said.
Much of the deposition was marked by a frustrating merry-go-round of questions with Maxwell asking for the definition of “female” multiple times and ducking 10 questions in a row about whether Epstein had abused children.
When pressed by lawyers, Maxwell claimed she had seen women hanging around Epstein’s pool topless, but she said that she did not know if they were underage.
Maxwell also denied allegations that she arranged for Giuffre to hook up with Britain’s Prince Andrew and said she “never instructed Virginia to have sex with anybody ever.”
Maxwell was also pressed by lawyers on her relationship with Epstein, whom she met in 1991.
“There were times when I would have liked to think of myself as his girlfriend,” she said. Asked whether Epstein liked to start off a sexual encounter with a massage, Maxwell replied, “I think you should ask that question of Jeffrey.”
When Epstein was deposed in 2016, he repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment, which protects against self-incrimination.
When asked if Maxwell was “one of the main women” he used to recruit underage girls for sexual activities, he answered, “Fifth.”
Epstein died in August 2019 in a Manhattan jail as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges.
Maxwell and her team of attorneys fought hard to keep her 2016 deposition under wraps for years, arguing that releasing it would violate her constitutional right against self-incrimination. Her lawyers also argued that it could prevent Maxwell from receiving a fair trial.
“If the unsealing order goes into effect, it will forever let the cat out of the bag,” her lawyers said, adding that “sensitive and personal information” about Maxwell might “spread like wildfire across the Internet.”
The deposition and other documents were cleared for release after the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday rejected her “meritless” arguments.
Maxwell was arrested on July 2 in Bradford, New Hampshire.
Prosecutors claimed that she went to great lengths to avoid capture, including wrapping her cellphone in tin foil, as well as changing her email address and registering a new phone under the name “G Max.”
Prosecutors also said that former British military members hired by Maxwell’s brother guarded her at her New Hampshire estate, which was purchased in cash via a limited liability corporation.
Since her arrest, Maxwell has been behind bars in a Brooklyn jail after the judge in her criminal case called her an unacceptable flight risk. She has pleaded not guilty to a six-count indictment that includes charges of conspiracy and of transporting minors (one as young as 14) to engage in criminal sexual activity. She was also charged with perjury for allegedly lying under oath during depositions in the civil lawsuit against her.
Maxwell was born and raised in the United Kingdom. She immigrated to the United States in 1991 following the death of her father, British media magnate Robert Maxwell. She quickly became a fixture in New York City’s social scene, and over the years, she has been photographed with Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton as well as Prince Andrew.
