What does Ghislaine Maxwell really know and why the Epstein files go deeper than you think
When FBI agents arrested Epstein after his private jet landed in New Jersey a month earlier and charged him with sex trafficking minors in Florida and New York, his victims waited to learn the truth. After his death, the voices clamouring for transparency got louder. As did those claiming conspiracy.
A year on, when his former girlfriend, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, was arrested by the FBI at a secluded property in New Hampshire, they didn't stop. And they didn't quieten when Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse minors.
Over the years, conspiracy theories have abounded of deep state coverups, speculation that rich and powerful men had been involved in an elite sex-trafficking ring, and that Epstein had been murdered so their identities would never be revealed.
Donald Trump, on the presidential campaign trail in 2024, fanned the flames further when he announced he'd seek to open the government's 'Epstein files' should he be elected.
When he did win the presidency, his attorney general, Pam Bondi, spoke of an Epstein 'client list' sitting on her desk. We knew that a cast of celebrities and politicians were in Epstein's black book — names like Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Tony Blair, Bill Cosby, and Woody Allen. But how many of those were just recipients of Epstein's political donations, friends, acquaintances? What incriminating evidence lay within the thousands of documents the FBI had assembled in the course of its investigation? Finally, it looked like we were about to find out.
Then, earlier this month, Trump's justice department and the FBI suddenly released a two-page unsigned memo concluding Epstein hadn't maintained a client list after all – and what's more, it wouldn't be releasing any further files related to its sex trafficking investigation, despite the promises by Trump and Bondi who had pledged to release a 'truckload' of bombshell FBI documents.
Nobody could have foreseen a fissure in the Maga ranks to appear so quickly and prominently. Karl Rove, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff under George Bush, said we were witnessing what happens when conspiracy collides with reality. 'For years,' he said, 'Trump raised questions about Epstein… After assuming the presidency a second time, Mr Trump was obligated to deliver.' When he didn't, 'Many in Maga reacted with incredulity and anger.'
Tucker Carlson, once Trump's most vocal cheerleader, turned on him, accusing the administration of betraying its base and of dismissing legitimate questions about Epstein.
Each day, the saga seems to unravel further. The Wall Street Journal published a story describing a sexually suggestive letter that the newspaper says bore Trump's name and was included in a 2003 album given to Epstein for his 50th birthday. Trump vehemently denied writing the letter, calling it 'false, malicious, and defamatory'. He then proceeded to sue the paper and its owner, media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
While Trump announced he asked Bondi to release 'pertinent' files on the criminal investigation of Epstein, 'subject to court approval', further intrigue was stirred on Wednesday when the WSJ reported that Bondi had informed Trump during briefing back in May that his name appeared in Justice Department documents related to Epstein.
The White House pushed back, dismissing the WSJ story as 'fake news'. But an unnamed White House official told Reuters they were not denying that Trump's name appears in the documents. Then, also on Wednesday, a judge rejected the Trump administration's request to unseal transcripts from grand jury documents relating to Epstein from 2005 and 2007 because they did not meet any of the extraordinary exceptions under federal law that could make them public.
A day later, an official at the Department of Justice met with Maxwell inside an office in a Florida courthouse. In a statement ahead of that meeting, Deputy attorney General Todd Blanche said: 'If Ghislaine Maxwell has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the DOJ will hear what she has to say.' Their first meeting was described as 'very productive' by Maxwell's lawyer, but for now at least, it's unlikely we'll hear exactly what Maxwell told him.
Meanwhile, senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat and fierce Trump critic, took issue with the fact that Trump sent Blanche, his former personal lawyer turned federal prosecutor, to interview Maxwell ahead of her potential public testimony. 'The conflict of interest is glaring. It stinks of high corruption,' he said on X.
It's important to understand what, exactly, the Epstein files are – and how they differ from the court documents Trump is now asking to be released.
Barry Levine, author of The Spider: Inside the Criminal Web of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, says that the grand jury testimony at issue is very limited and has little to do with the two-decades-long sex trafficking operation that Epstein ran.
He says the US attorney at the time, Geoffrey Berman, went in front of a grand jury and presented just enough evidence to successfully bring an indictment. 'And that indictment was very narrow in its content – for the sexual abuse of minors from 2002 to 2005 at Epstein's homes in Palm Beach and New York,' Levine says. 'If you look at the prosecution of Ghislaine Maxwell, that prosecution was extremely narrow also in terms of the specific allegations against her.' Maxwell was convicted on five sex-trafficking-related counts.
Levine said if these court documents are released, they're going to tell us very little in addition to what we already know. 'It's basically a sliver of the information that's contained in the actual FBI files.'
Those files – the 'real' Epstein files, if you like – are, Levine says, incredibly detailed. The FBI files cover every aspect of Epstein's crimes and his life over two decades, including extensive interviews with victims and information that goes all the way back to the original FBI investigation in 2006.
Epstein was already a convicted child molester when he was arrested in 2019: in 2008, he pleaded guilty to a state charge in Florida of procuring a minor for prostitution. Back then, a federal investigation into his crimes resulted in a 'non-prosecution agreement'. Alexander Acosta, who was then the US attorney responsible, said he offered a lenient plea deal because he was told Epstein was an intelligence asset.
As Levine said, 'We don't know if it was US intelligence or a foreign role as an intelligence asset.' If, indeed, Epstein was an intelligence asset at all. By all accounts, he had a grandiose image of himself as an 'international man of mystery'.
The FBI file on Epstein, which dates back to that time, is 300GB. 'That translates to enough information to fill perhaps 100,000 books by some estimates,' Levine says.
We don't know if there has ever been any criminal investigation into Trump's conduct as it relates to Epstein. 'But,' Levine said, 'that doesn't necessarily mean that there [aren't] details about Donald Trump in the file because they were friends for 15 years. He was Epstein's wingman after [Trump's] divorce from Ivana Trump; they hung out a great deal. They were still friends during his marriage to Marla Maples and even up to the time when Trump was courting Melania.'
Trump and Epstein were friends before, according to the president, they fell out in the early 2000s. By not allowing full disclosure of the Epstein files, Trump has ignited what Levine said is the most infighting within the Maga movement he's ever seen. 'There's a raging inferno in the Maga ranks that Trump has, for the first time in his political career, been unable to put out, and we're seeing individuals who have worshipped him like a God now speaking out against him. It really is fascinating.'
So what does Ghislaine Maxwell really know? According to journalist Julie Brown, whose investigation into Epstein for the Miami Herald in 2018 was credited with the FBI re-opening the sexual abuse case against him: everything.
'I think [the DOJ] are trying to get her to say Trump wasn't involved. I think that's the aim of this,' Brown says. 'They're not aiming to expose anybody else who was involved. They're just aiming to clear up any misconceptions around Trump … So far there's been no evidence he was involved with Epstein's crimes at all, but nevertheless, the idea that he shut the investigation down so solidly without even saying, 'we're going to look at this a little bit more' I think makes a lot of people wonder…'
Brown, whose 2021 book Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story has recently seen a surge in demand, selling out both in shops and online, says it's unfortunate the way the Trump administration has handled the Epstein Files. 'For a long time, they promised transparency with this case … And I think there was some hope on the part of both the public and the survivors that they would get some answers. Here was a man who abused hundreds of young girls and women over two decades. And he essentially got away with it.
'We don't know why they're not releasing it. It's a little bit disturbing to be announcing all over television that you're going to release these files and then all of a sudden on the Friday after the Fourth of July holiday, when nobody's really paying attention to the news, to issue this statement that basically says there's nothing to see here and we're not going to open the files.'
Brown says there are likely a lot of other people involved in Epstein's crimes that haven't been brought to justice; so many, she says, who have avoided prosecution.
Epstein was trafficking underage girls for sex over the course of two decades. Because of that, his co-conspirators could number as many as 100, Brown believes. 'He had so many different people work for him at different times – people who helped arrange his 'schedule' in quote marks, lawyers who helped arrange the visas for models that he would bring from overseas, pilots. He had a huge staff of people. The list goes on and on.'
As Barry Levine says, we know from the attorney general in the Virgin Islands who investigated Epstein's operation there that 'Epstein was using international fixers to bring women in from all different countries, like Russia and elsewhere.'
When Palm Beach police conducted a search of Epstein's home there in 2005, they confiscated hundreds of notepads, the contents of some of which have been made public in civil lawsuits.
'On those, you'll see messages from powerful men who called him,' Brown says. 'They'll have their name, and then it'll say 'I'm at this hotel'. Now, that's not enough to say they were doing anything with underage girls.
'But I know from talking to some of the attorneys representing these survivors that there were powerful people who would come to Palm Beach and basically call to tell Epstein 'I'm here'. And the unspoken or unwritten message was: you can send somebody to me.'
Brown believes that it's unlikely Maxwell will ever reveal what is in those files. At her trial, her main line of defence was that it didn't happen – 'that these girls were all making it up to get money out of a very wealthy man.'
The truth is, Brown said, Maxwell knows exactly what's in the Epstein files. 'She knows everything. … And she used her motherly way, her nurturing way, to lure these women into this orbit.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Two snorkelers die, child injured during lobster miniseason in Miami
Two snorkelers died and a child was injured in separate incidents during Florida's two-day spiny lobster miniseason in the Keys, which has now ended. The miniseason, held on the last Wednesday and Thursday of July, attracts thousands eager to catch lobster before the regular season begins on August 6. On Wednesday, Clarence Shawver, 82, of Palm City, was found unresponsive about five miles off Grassy Key after going snorkeling around 10:45 a.m., according to the Monroe County Sheriff's Office. Shawver was later pronounced dead at Fisherman's Hospital in Marathon. The next day, around 8:30 a.m., Raymond Sasser, 61, of Loxahatchee, lost consciousness while snorkeling in the ocean. He was transported to Mariners Hospital in Tavernier, where he was pronounced dead. Authorities do not suspect foul play in either case. Both autopsy results are pending. Also on Thursday, around 11 a.m., a child suffered a leg injury from a boat propeller about five miles off Big Pine Key and was airlifted to Nicklaus Children's Hospital in Miami for treatment. 'Overall, the 2025 lobster mini season was typical for the Sheriff's Office,' the MSCO - Florida Keys said in a Facebook post Friday about the deaths and injury. 'Most people were in compliance and the number of vessel stops, notice-to-appear in court citations, and arrest figures were normal/typical compared to recent years.' Police made no arrests during the two-day lobster miniseason but issued approximately 16 mandatory-court-appearance citations and carried out 526 resource checks to ensure conservation law compliance.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Police continue to search for Montana gunman who killed four people in a bar
Authorities continued to search Saturday afternoon for the man accused of killing four people at a Montana bar. Local, state and federal law enforcement were looking for 45-year-old Michael Paul Brown, a US army veteran who lived in a small town, Anaconda, next to The Owl Bar, where on Friday morning he allegedly opened fire and killed a bartender and three patrons. Officials located Brown's abandoned white truck according to Lee Johnson, Montana division of criminal investigation administrator. They concentrated their search in the mountains west of Anaconda, a town of less than 10,000 residents that was centered around a copper processing facility. 'This is a small, tight-knit community that has been harmed by the heinous actions of one individual who does not represent what this community or Montanans stand for,' Johnson said. On Friday night, nearby residents were encouraged to stay inside their homes and be on high alert as law enforcement believed Brown was armed and dangerous, Johnson said. But on Saturday afternoon, Bill Sather, the Anaconda-Deer Lodge police chief, told residents it was 'OK to go about your business in town' but to use caution and report anything suspicious to law enforcement. Authorities released a photo of Brown, who is 5ft 10in tall; weighs about 170lbs; and has blue eyes and brown hair, according to USA Today. The FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were assisting local and state police with the search, according to posts on X. As of Saturday afternoon, law enforcement had not released the names of the victims. Brown served in the US army as an armor crewman from 2001 to 2005 and was deployed to Iraq from early 2004 until March 2005, according to an army spokesperson. He was in the Montana national guard from 2006 to March 2009 and left military service in the rank of sergeant. 'This isn't just a drunk/high man going wild,' Brown's niece, Clare Boyle, wrote in a Facebook message to the Associated Press. 'It's a sick man who doesn't know who he is sometimes and frequently doesn't know where or when he is either.' Montana ranked second worst in the country in terms of prevalence of mental illness and access to care, according to the non-profit Mental Health America. Two-thirds of adults in Montana also lived in homes with guns, the highest rate in the country, according to a 2016 study from RAND, a thinktank. The owner of the Firefly Café in Anaconda told the Associated Press that she locked up her business after a friend alerted her to the shooting. 'We are Montana, so guns are not new to us,' Barbie Nelson said. 'For our town to be locked down, everybody's pretty rattled.' Associated Press contributed reporting
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Billionaire fraudster Elizabeth Holmes seen enjoying facilities at Ghislaine Maxwell's cushy new prison
Blood tech fraudster Elizabeth Holmes was spotted enjoying some leisure time at the same cushy Texas prison Ghislaine Maxwell has just been moved to. The disgraced Theranos founder became jail mates with Maxwell at Federal Prison Camp Bryan after the notorious madam was moved to the facility Thursday. Barring a longshot pardon from President Donald Trump, Maxwell will spend about seven years incarcerated at the same time as Holmes, who is scheduled to be released on April 3, 2032. Maxwell, who was convicted in June 2022 recruiting underage girls into Jeffrey Epstein 's sex trafficking ring, had been serving her sentence at a more restrictive prison in Florida. But she was moved after complaining to authorities that she was fed up of listening to transgender prisoners having loud sex. On Saturday, Holmes was seen taking a leisurely jog in a grassy area of the minimum security Texas prison. She was wearing a gray T-shirt and matching gray shorts with black sneakers. She also appeared to be wearing a watch. She was notably without fellow high profile inmate Jen Shah, the former Real Housewife of Salt Lake City who is also incarcerated at the facility. Shah pleaded guilty to fraud charges related to a telemarketing scheme she ran targeting the elderly. Photos have also shown Holmes and Shah running at the same time while engaging in cozy chats. Maxwell, who herself has been pictured running at her Florida prison, will likely soon run into both women. Camp Bryan is an all-female prison, unlike the Tallahassee prison, which housed men and women. The camp is also a much more comfortable prison that holds primarily white-collar criminals and not people convicted of violent crimes. Maxwell's sudden removal to Texas from a low-security prison in Tallahassee outraged Epstein's victims and their families. 'This is the justice system failing victims right before our eyes,' said sisters Annie and Maria Farmer and members of Virginia Giuffre's family in a statement obtained by Daily Mail. 'Ghislaine Maxwell is a sexual predator who physically assaulted minor children on multiple occasions, and she should never be shown any leniency. 'Yet, without any notification to the Maxwell victims, the government overnight has moved Maxwell to a minimum security luxury prison in Texas.' Prison consultant Justin Paperny told Daily Mail he had never seen anyone convicted of a sex offense serve time in a minimum security prison such as Camp Bryan. 'She was in a low security prison, that looks like prisons on TV or in the movies. You're fenced in, razor wire, women serving typically 10 years or longer, more violent crime, sexual offenses,' Paperny said. Paperny runs White Collar Advice, which advises future inmates on what to expect inside. 'She will feel incredibly free. There is a very low staff to prisoner ratio and camps like Bryan, no fences or barbed wire,' he said. 'You can literally walk off and nobody will stop you. It's a cushy country club and looks like a corporate office park or a junior college.' Maxwell will also be able to purchase beauty and leisure items from the commissary, including make-up and crochet and sewing kits. There is even a softball field and pickleball courts at the facility. It is undoubtedly a huge upgrade for Maxwell, who was previously dealing with transgender prisoners having loud sex out in the open, a source told Daily Mail. The source also said Maxwell was bitter and frequently complained about the conditions at the Tallahassee prison. 'There was inadequate food. Ghislaine is a vegetarian and each prisoner is supposed to get 8oz of protein a day, but she was getting 2oz or less. The food was moldy. Everyone, not just Ghislaine, complained about the food,' the source said. Maxwell's lawyer David Oscar Markus confirmed to Daily Mail that she was moved from the Tallahassee prison on Thursday. The Bureau of Prisons confirmed the transfer on Friday. Neither Markus or the BOP have offered any reason for why Maxwell was moved. This comes the Trump administration struggles to contain the fallout of its decision not to release the unredacted Epstein files. Maxwell has promised to testify about what she knows about the Epstein case in exchange for immunity or a presidential pardon. House leaders have roundly rejected giving her immunity, while people close to Trump have insisted a pardon is not in the works.
