Jeffrey Epstein’s ex-girlfriend has rejected claims she introduced a teenage girl as a sex partner to Prince Andrew, in a newly released deposition that she fought to keep secret.
Ghislaine Maxwell said she “never at any time, at any place, in any moment ever asked” Virginia Giuffre to “have sex with anybody”.
Giuffre claims she was forced to have sex with Andrew when she was 17 on the instructions of Maxwell, a socialite and close friend of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
During the 465-page deposition, which was recorded in April 2016 but released on Friday morning (Australian time), Maxwell branded Giuffre an “awful fantasist”.
Maxwell said she could not recall taking Giuffre out for a night of clubbing with Andrew in London.
“Are we tallying all the lies?” Maxwell asked during the 2016 deposition.
“Her tissue of lies is extremely hard to pick apart what is true and what isn’t.”
US District Judge Loretta A Preska had ordered the release of the transcripts of seven hours of depositions of Maxwell being interviewed for a defamation suit filed by Giuffre in 2015.
In the testimony, Maxwell denied ever seeing Epstein involved in “inappropriate underage activities”, saying “I have never seen anybody have sexual intercourse with Jeffrey, ever”.
She continued: “I never ever at any single time at any point ever at all participated in anything with Virginia and Jeffrey.
“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 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.
“A very small part of my job was from time to time to find adult professional massage therapists for Jeffrey,” Maxwell said in the 2016 transcript.
Asked if she hired underage girls for sexual activities, Maxwell said “When I meant hire, I didn’t mean hire in the way you are doing it”.
“What I say is that I went to spas and I met people and if they did home visits, Jeffrey would then, in fact, hire them,” she said.
“I’m not responsible for hiring someone. And they were not full-time, so it’s not a correct characterisation.”
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.
The judge allowed release of the transcripts after rejecting arguments that the interviews for Giuffre’s 2015 defamation lawsuit against Maxwell would jeopardise a fair criminal trial for Maxwell next July.
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.
The 2016 transcripts were among more than 2000 pages of documents being released since a federal appeals court last year began unsealing documents from the since-settled Giuffre lawsuit.
-with AAP
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