Jeffrey Epstein's ex-girlfriend claimed she "never saw any inappropriate underage activities" with him
Transcripts released Thursday show Jeffrey Epstein's ex-girlfriend was combative and defensive under tough questioning four years ago about her ex-boyfriend's interactions with underage girls. In the transcripts, Ghislaine Maxwell repeatedly denied hiring anyone under the age of 18 for Epstein.
"I never saw any inappropriate underage activities with Jeffrey ever," she said.
Manhattan U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska had ordered the transcripts of seven hours of depositions of Maxwell released by 9 a.m. Thursday.
Preska allowed the release of the transcripts after rejecting arguments from Maxwell's lawyers that the interviews for a defamation lawsuit brought against Maxwell by an alleged Epstein victim several years ago would jeopardize a fair criminal trial for her next July.
Maxwell, 58, has been held without bail since her July arrest on charges that she procured three underage girls for Epstein to sexually abuse between 1994 and 1997. She has pleaded not guilty.
The transcripts were among over 2,000 pages of documents that began to be released last year after a federal appeals court began the unsealing of documents from the since-settled defamation case brought in 2015 by Virginia Giuffre. She said Maxwell recruited her at age 17 to be sexually abused by Epstein and Maxwell from 1999 to 2002.
Giuffre has accused Epstein of arranging for her to have sexual encounters with numerous wealthy and influential men, including Britain's Prince Andrew. He and the other men have denied her allegations.
During the 2016 deposition, Maxwell parried a long list of inquiries about Epstein's sexual proclivities and her interactions with Giuffre and other young women, insisting she never saw Epstein have sex with anybody.
"She is an absolute total liar and you all know she lied on multiple things and that is just one other disgusting thing she added," Maxwell said, denying having three-way sex with Epstein and Giuffre.
Giuffre spoke to "CBS This Morning" co-host Gayle King in July and told her "you couldn't say no" to Epstein and Maxwell from her position because "you're afraid for your life."
When asked by King whether she thought there should be men panicking over what Maxwell might tell authorities, Giuffre said she would "really hope they are."
"Very, very well-known, popular men that everyone would know the names of … I can't wait for the day of truth to light," she said.
In the transcripts, Maxwell repeatedly derided Giuffre, calling her an "awful fantasist."
"Are we tallying all the lies?" Maxwell asked, saying she could not recall taking Giuffre out for a night of clubbing with Andrew in London. "Her tissue of lies is extremely hard to pick apart what is true and what isn't."
She said she "never instructed Virginia to have sex with anybody ever."
Asked if she trained Giuffre to recruit others to perform sexual massages, Maxwell said: "It′s absurd."
As for whether Maxwell was Epstein's girlfriend after meeting him in 1991, she called it a "tricky question."
"There were times when I would have liked to think of myself as his girlfriend," she said.
Asked whether it was Epstein's "preference to start a massage with sex," Maxwell said: "I think you should ask that question of Jeffrey."
In a deposition of Epstein conducted later that year, Epstein mostly invoked the Fifth Amendment, which protects against self-incrimination.
"Fifth," he replied when he was asked if Maxwell was "one of the main women" he used to procure underage girls for sexual activities.
The Miami Herald, whose reporting in 2018 brought fresh scrutiny to Epstein's alleged crimes, had argued in seeking the unsealing that Maxwell's fear of embarrassment shouldn't stop the public from learning of "the sexual abuse of young girls at the hands of the wealthy and powerful."
Epstein was 66 in August 2019 when he killed himself in a federal jail in Manhattan as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges.
