Maxwell won’t call on Prince, brother insists
Ian Maxwell is adamant his sister will not call the Duke of York as a witness when she stands trial this summer.
He recalls Prince Andrew’s last public interrogation — by Emily Maitlis on BBC TV’s Newsnight — and considers it a bad idea for him to come to Ghislaine Maxwell’s defence.
“It was the most remarkable piece of self-destruction,” he says. “As he proved in that interview, I think he’s a pretty serious hostage to fortune.”
Maxwell, 64, believes his sister, 59, has become a hate figure in part because she is a woman accused of sex crimes. He claims she is being treated far worse than men such as Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, both convicted of sex offences.
Maxwell has written a letter to Joe Biden’s attorney general, pleading for the US to give his sister a fair trial.
He says his sister risks becoming a victim of a miscarriage of justice for the sex crimes committed by her onetime boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire financier who hanged himself in 2019 while awaiting trial.
Maxwell’s sister is in a Brooklyn jail on charges relating to allegations that took place up to 27 years ago, made by four women whose identities the courts will not reveal.
Her brother has likened the conditions of her imprisonment to “torture” and questions how she can plan a defence in such circumstances. When — or if — she is acquitted, he adds, she plans to campaign for people who spend months on pretrial detention in the US.
The British socialite was told this week that she faced two further charges of sex trafficking of a minor after a new woman came forward. In total, she faces eight charges.
Ian Maxwell complains that because of the anonymity of his sister’s accusers, she is unable to prepare a defence.
“It’s completely Kafka-esque. You don’t know who’s accusing you; you don’t know what you’re accused of specifically; you don’t know when it’s alleged to have happened, other than it did happen.”
Prince Andrew gave the Newsnight interview in November 2019, three months after Epstein died. In it, he denied wrongdoing but failed to express sympathy for Epstein’s victims and argued that the account of one victim, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, was false because he did not sweat and had been at a Pizza Express.
The claims opened him up to ridicule, but Maxwell doesn’t believe that interview had any bearing on the pursuit of his sister. The die was cast when Epstein died, says Maxwell, and authorities needed somebody in the dock.