Exgirlfriend denies helping Prince Andrew
NEW YORK — Jeffrey Epstein’s exgirlfriend denied introducing Britain’s Prince Andrew to underage sex partners in a defensive and combative deposition made public Thursday, calling the prince’s accuser an “awful fantasist.”
“Are we tallying all the lies?” Ghislaine Maxwell asked during the 2016 deposition, saying she could not recall taking Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre out for a night of clubbing with Andrew in London.
The exchange was contained in hundreds of pages of transcripts ordered released by U. S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska in a civil lawsuit.
Maxwell has been charged with recruiting three underage girls in the 1990s for Epstein to sexually abuse and committing perjury in the depositions, though the charges don’t relate to the prince. She has pleaded not guilty.
Maxwell, 58, parried a long list of inquiries about Epstein’s sexual proclivities and her interactions with Giuffre and other young women, insisting she never saw the financier 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 threeway sex with Epstein and Giuffre.
“I never saw any inappropriate underage activities with Jeffrey ever,” Maxwell said.
Giuffre has accused Epstein of arranging for her to have sexual encounters with numerous wealthy and influential men, including Prince Andrew. He and the other men have denied her allegations.
Maxwell repeatedly denied hiring anyone under the age of 18 for Epstein.
As for whether she was Epstein’s girlfriend after meeting him in 1991, Maxwell called it a “tricky question.”
“There were times when I would have liked to think of myself as his girlfriend,” she said.
In a deposition of Epstein conducted later in 2016, 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.
Maxwell has been held without bail since her July arrest on charges that she procured the underage girls for Epstein to sexually abuse between 1994 and 1997.
Epstein was 66 in August 2019 when he killed himself in a federal jail in Manhattan as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges.