What Ghislaine Maxwell really knows and why she could finally spill all on Jeffrey Epstein: sources

New York Post

12 hours ago

Ex-socialite Ghislaine Maxwell will try to cut a deal with federal authorities during a jailhouse meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, sources told The Post.
Blanche said Tuesday he plans to meet with the convicted madam, currently serving a 20- year sentence in Florida for sex trafficking young women for her former boss, notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
'She's going to make a deal,' said Alan Dershowitz, a lawyer and law professor who was pals with, and previously represented, Epstein, who died in federal custody in August 2019.
'That's the way things are done. They make deals with the mafia, so I'm certain they are going to try to make a deal with her.'
8 Epstein and Maxwell (center) pose with Gwendolyn Beck( right), a former girlfriend of disgraced former New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez.
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8 Ghislaine Maxwell pictured during a prison interview from FCI Tallahassee in Florida.
Talk TV
A separate legal expert explained meeting with Blanche presents an opportunity for Maxwell to potentially lessen her sentence or get out of prison in exchange for spiling secrets about her and Epstein's life, which she has closely guarded since his death.
Dershowitz has referred to Maxwell, 63, as the 'Rosetta stone' of information about Epstein, and told The Post Tuesday 'she knows everything — not just about the perpetrators but the victims. And she knows about the victims who became perpetrators.'
Some of Epstein's victims – which number over 1,000 in total according to the Department of Justice – were groomed to recruit other young women, according to court papers.
8 Prince Andrew was forced to pay more than $16 million in a court settlement to Virginia Giuffre years after she accused him of having sex with her.
SplashNews.com
Maxwell has been closely associated with Epstein since the death of her publishing magnate father Robert Maxwell in 1991. The pair were inseparable at high society parties across New York and the world spanning the next two decades.
Maxwell benefitted from Epstein's mysteriously accumulated fortune, while she was seen as his social fixer, able to gain the somewhat unrefined character access to rarefied society circles. Maxwell – who was, at one point, Epstein's girlfriend – got him access even to the UK royal family and facilitated his friendship with Prince Andrew.
The British prince shelled out more than $16 million to Virginia Giuffre, one of the young women recruited by Maxwell and Epstein. Giuffre, who took her own life in April, also alleged she had been passed around as a sex slave to others, although their identities have never properly been established.
8 Ghislaine Maxwell clutches a photograph of her father, the legendary British press baron.
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8 Ghislaine Maxwell's family claims that she is in danger at FCI Tallahassee, where living conditions are poor.
Maxwell said through her brother she would be willing to testify before a Congressional Committee on her relationship with Epstein.
It could be the first time federal prosecutors hear her version of events, as both her defense lawyers and prosecutors said they had not engaged in plea negotiations which would require such an interview before her trial.
Her lawyers at the time said she did not need to negotiate as she was innocent.
The case has been thrust back into the spotlight by the justice department's promise to release all the information gathered by the FBI from raiding Epstein's properties earlier this year, only to then walk it back.
A Justice Department-FBI joint memo concluded the 66-year-old financier killed himself in a federal lockup and did not have a 'client list' of powerful friends who allegedly took part in sexual encounters with underage women.
With no more information expected to be released by the federal government, Maxwell's version of events once again becomes of prime importance.
8 Ghislaine Maxwell was Jeffrey Epstein's closest confidante.
Mathieu Polak
She is believed to have kept silent while her appeals process played out for fear of jeopardizing her chances in the case. However, with most of her possibilities of appeal recently exhausted – apart from one petition to the Supreme Court – she may now feel compelled to give her side of the story.
Her brother, Ian Maxwell, speaks to his sister frequently and has, alongside other members of his family, fought her corner since her initial arrest in 2020.
He also denied the existence of a client list of powerful people girls had been trafficked to.
'Let's not try and big it up for more than it is. I think it was a high-quality address book. I don't think it constitutes 'a list', let alone a list of alleged people to whom young minor girls were trafficked,' Ian told 'Piers Morgan Uncensored'.
'Ghislaine's position on this, for what it's worth, has been, she doesn't ever believe that such a list existed.'
Ian Maxwell has also said he believes his sister should never have been prosecuted due to a deal Epstein cut with Florida federal prosecutors when he was first convicted of sex offenses in 2007.
8 Ghislaine Maxwell during an interview from prison with the UK's Talk TV from January 2023.
Talk TV
In exchange for pleading guilty to lesser charges of soliciting a prostitute, the deal Epstein signed said he and any co-conspirators would be immune from further federal prosecution. New York prosecutors later argued successfully in court that the deal's jurisdiction ended in Florida.
Maxwell was then convicted after a trial in New York in 2021, and has been serving her sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee, a low security prison, since July 2022.
8 Ghislaine Maxwell (left) with her father Robert Maxwell and her mother Elizabeth Maxwell at Cannes festival in 1987.
Steve Wood/Shutterstock
Her family has long claimed the prison is unsafe and Maxwell is subject to poor living conditions, and frequently placed in solitary confinement. They also say they fear for her life.
'Prisons are very dangerous places and we know from Ghislaine that there are serious staff shortages and more dangerous higher-risk-category prisoners now being admitted to … Tallahassee,' said Ian Maxwell.
With questions about the circumstances of Epstein's death in federal prison in 2019 still raging, some fear for Ghislaine's wellbeing and vulnerability while in prison.
President Trump has blasted the Epstein saga as a 'hoax' and ripped a faction of his supporters who have fixated on the scandal, which involved allegations of orgies and sexual encounters on Epstein's private plane, his homes in Palm Beach and Manhattan as well as Little St. James, his former private island in the Caribbean.
However, he approved of the outreach to Maxwell on Tuesday, saying: 'I think it would be something — sounds appropriate to do, yeah,' according to Politico.