A 418-page deposition in which Ghislaine Maxwell is interrogated about her sex life has been made public today.
The bombshell document was released Thursday morning after Maxwell’s attorneys fought tooth and nail to keep the deposition private. It stems from a defamation lawsuit brought against Maxwell from Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre.
Over the course of the heated deposition, Maxwell refused to answer questions about her sex life with Epstein, denied she participated in orgies and rebuffed questions about underage girls, including a 13-year-old, being in Epstein’s home.
President Bill Clinton and Britain’s Prince Andrew were also brought up during the conversation, with Maxwell profusely claiming Clinton had never been to Epstein’s ‘pedo’ island.
She also skirted questions about Giuffre’s claim that Prince Andrew used a Spitting Image puppet to grope her in Epstein’s New York home. Giuffre has claimed she was instructed to have sex with Prince Andrew, which he has vehemently denied.
Maxwell is currently in jail awaiting trial on charges that she lured girls as young as 14 years old Epstein for him to abuse between 1994 and 1997.
New York prosecutors claim she perjured herself in her deposition, when she was asked if Epstein had ‘a scheme to recruit underage girls for sexual massages’.
Maxwell flatly said: ‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’
A 418-page deposition in which Ghislaine Maxwell is interrogated about her sex life was made public on Thursday
Maxwell’s lawyers have previously said the deposition concerns attempts to ‘compel Ms Maxwell to answer intrusive questions about her sex life’. An image of a topless Ghislaine was submitted as evidence
Over the course of the lengthy deposition, Maxwell refused to answer a majority of the questions.
She took several opportunities to bash Giuffre, saying at one point she is an ‘awful fantasist’ who created a ‘tissue of lies’.
Maxwell did admit that she encouraged girls to perform massages because, she said, they’d earn more money and that it was ‘career advice’, but denied ever having ‘non-consensual sex’ with anyone.
She also claimed she had never been in the room with Virginia when Epstein was receiving a massage from her or any other girl ‘under the age of 18’.
At one stage, she was asked if she’d ever seen Epstein around young girls, to which she replied: ‘I have friends who have children.’
Maxwell – who dated Epstein in the 1990s – refused to answer when asked if he liked having his nipples pinched, saying she would not discuss any of their sex life.
She routinely denied raping Virginia or any other person, saying: ‘I have never had non-consensual sex with anybody. I just testified I never had non-consensual sex with anybody, ever , at any time, any place, at any time, with anybody.’
When asked if she’d ‘trained’ Virginia on how to perform sexual massages, she replied: ‘’No and it’s absurd and her entire story is one giant tissue of lies and furthermore, she herself has- if she says that – you have to ask her about what she did.’
Maxwell’s lawyers have previously said releasing the deposition would prejudice her right to a fair trial.
In their ruling the judges said that ‘we cannot conclude that the district court abused its discretion in ordering the unsealing of the deposition materials’.
The deposition is part of thousands of files that are gradually being made public as part of a defamation case brought against Maxwell by Virginia Roberts Giuffre. Giuffre is seen with Maxwell and Prince Andrew
The ruling said: ‘The District Court correctly held that the deposition materials are judicial documents to which the presumption of public access attaches and did not abuse its discretion in rejecting Maxwell’s meritless arguments that her interests superseded the presumption of access.
‘The District Court’s order articulated and applied the correct legal framework in its individualized review of the materials to be unsealed’.
The deposition stems from Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s defamation case against the former British socialite.
She is an Epstein victim who claims she was forced to have sex with Prince Andrew, allegations he denies, and that Maxwell groomed her.
Maxwell settled the defamation case in 2017 but media organizations applied to have the documents in the case made public and they are being released on a rolling basis.
Giuffre’s lawyer David Boies said he was ‘pleased’ with the judges’ decision.
He said: ‘It is an important step towards vindicating the public interest in understanding the scope and scale of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring and the efforts made to conceal it’.
Boies was one of the lawyers who took the deposition in 2016 which led to two perjury charges for which Maxwell is also accused.
The ruling is the latest legal setback against Maxwell, who was arrested in July and is seen by many of Epstein’s victims as his right hand woman.
During a hearing last week Maxwell’s attorney Adam Mueller said that the release of a document so central to one of prosecutors’ six charges in her criminal case could prejudice a jury.
The Court of Appeal for the Second Circuit in New York found that the British socialite’s argument against its release was ‘meritless’
Maxwell, 58, is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn as she awaits trial on sex trafficking charges
Mueller said that the deposition ‘should never have been filed’ to the case and the arguments for releasing it ‘don’t pass muster’
Judge Jose Cabranes said that in the deposition Maxwell refused to answer questions ‘about consensual sexual activities involving adults, isn’t that accurate?’
Mueller said: ‘Some of the questions we declined to answer but there were questions and answers given’.
He cited two parts of the deposition which he said showed there was ‘affirmative testimony about intimate matters’.
Mueller said: ‘There are cases where our client answers no to questions asking for intimate information and a denial of having engaged in certain intimate conduct is as revealing about intimate behavior as an admission to doing that conduct
‘To the extent there was I don’t remember answers or I’m not going to answers or no, the questions themselves, these were leading questions that presuppose and answer and presuppose an evidentiary basis for the answer. The questions themselves were problematic.
‘It’s akin to a ‘when did you stop beating your wife’ type question and there are lots of examples of that throughout the deposition’.
Judge Cabranes asked: ‘Is it fair to say your client did not deny knowledge of any activity involving underage minors or did she?’
Mueller said: ‘I’m hesitant to answer the question only because at the moment the deposition is sealed. I can try to speak in generalities to avoid revealing something that is for the moment sealed’.
Maxwell, 58, is currently in jail awaiting trial on charges that she lured girls as young as 14 to Jeffrey Epstein to abuse between 1994 and 1997
The documents that have been released already have given crucial new insight into the Epstein case.
The first batch was unsealed last August and in them Giuffre named a slew of famous men who were allegedly involved in the abuse of girls by Epstien.
They included former US Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, Epstein’s attorney Alan Dershowitz, billionaire financier Glenn Dubin, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, the late MIT scientist Marvin Minsky and modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel.
A second tranche of documents was made public in July this year and included an email sent from Maxwell to Epstein in January 2015 when Giuffre filed a bombshell affidavit detailing her allegations.
In the message Maxwell urged Epstein to go public about a British girlfriend of his in an apparent attempt to discredit the allegations against him.
Epstein emailed Maxwell: ‘You have done nothing wrong and I would urge you to start acting like it. Go outside head high not as an escaping convict’.
The latest development comes after the New York Daily News reported that lawyers for Epstein and Maxwell’s alleged victims tried to get the same prosecutors who brought charges against them to do so back in 2016.
David Boies, who represents Giuffre among other Epstein victims, pleaded with Amanda Kramer, the top human trafficking prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, four years ago.
He said that they could ‘establish beyond any reasonable doubt there was a massive sex trafficking ring going on’ but Kramer balked.
She reportedly said that ‘this has already been looked into’, referring to the 2007 plea deal Epstein reached with federal prosecutors in Florida.
Under that sweetheart arrangement Epstein served just 15 months in jail but Kramer was apparently reticent about second guessing the work of her colleagues in Florida.
It was not until the Miami Herald’s report in 2018 that Epstein was finally arrested by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York in July 2019.
Epstein hanged himself weeks later while awaiting trial and Maxwell was arrested in July this year, almost a year to the day that Epstein was apprehended.
She denies all allegations against her and is due to stand trial next summer.