Alert – Ghislaine Maxwell’s bizarre defense of Epstein as she reveals why he preferred younger women in DOJ grilling over billionaire’s ‘deviant’ behavior: Live updates

Ghislaine Maxwell admitted to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche that, while the young women constantly in Jeffrey Epstein's presence was 'not normal,' she said they'd have left if he 'had been creepy.'

Maxwell spent multiple days testifying to Blanche about the deceased billionaire pedophile.

At one point, Blanche challenged Maxwell: Did he seem to you to be a sexual deviant? Young women were everywhere. Multiple massages on some days. Flew with the women to the island, to New York, Paris. There’s always women, they’re always rubbing him, giving him massages. I think it would be an understatement to say that that’s not normal?'

Maxwell simply replied: 'I agree.'

However, she challenged the idea that the young women were there purely for sex. Saying that Epstein preferred them, provided they were of legal age, because they were 'invigorating' and would turn him on to new music.

'If he had been creepy… I don’t think the women would have been there,' Maxwell claimed.

Ghislaine Maxwell denied accusations made by the late Virginia Giuffre that she was paid to be in a relationship with Prince Andrew and that she had sex in Maxwell's home.

Giuffre died by suicide earlier in 2025.

Maxwell referred to the allegations as 'rubbish,' and said that she wasn't in London when Giuffre claimed this happened.

She said she was out of town for her mother's 80th birthday at the time.

Maxwell also claimed that Giuffre's allegations that they had sex in Maxwell's bathroom were physically impossible because her home is only 900 square feet.

Prince Andrew settled a lawsuit with Giuffre in 2022 for an undisclosed amount.

Furthermore, Maxwell never had any inkling that she should introduce Prince Andrew to Epstein.

'I couldn’t imagine them being friends. Two chalk and cheeses would never — I mean, for real, there’s nothing there to connect them,' she said, using a British expression.

Public affairs network C-SPAN is spending its entire broadcast evening – and some of its morning – re-broadcasting the tapes of the interview between Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Ghislaine Maxwell.

The entire tapes last over nine hours, so anyone watching on the east coast of the United States would be staying up well past 5am to watch the entire thing.

The attorney for several of Jeffrey Epstein's victims called the release of the Ghislaine Maxwell transcripts 'probably about the best we could get' from the billionaire pedophile's right-hand woman.

James Marsh, who represented Maria Farmer and others, called the release 'a good thing but told CNN he's been 'trying to lower expectations about this transcript and the so-called DOJ records for weeks now.'

He noted that he and the victims had heard similar answers from Maxwell 'over decades.'

Marsh said that Maxwell 'has a really good recall of his finances, the deals that he was involved in, intricate details of the people that he knew.'

However, he called her answers to the most hot button accusations and topics related to Epstein, she becomes 'a little bit more vague and very studied in her responses.'

Ultimately, he understands why Maxwell testified that way, as she's appealing her conviction and is 'sort of damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t.'

'If she tells the full truth, everything she absolutely knows about Jeffrey Epstein, the public is not going to view her in good light. And certainly she’s got these cases on appeal. She’s trying to get a commutation, I’m sure. She’s trying to get a reduction in her sentence or an outright pardon,' Marsh said.

'So this was probably about the best we could get for her under those circumstances.'

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. once went on a dinosaur bone hunting trip with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, she told the DOJ.

Maxwell refers to RFK Jr. as 'Bobby' and said he and Epstein knew each other.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche then asked how when Maxwell brought up the trip.

'Because we went on a trip together. Dinosaur bone hunting in the Dakotas.'

Kennedy has in the past admitted to flying twice on Epstein's plane.

However, Maxwell said that she 'never saw anything inappropriate with Mr. Kennedy.'

'If I didn’t make it clear, I will reiterate it. I never, ever saw any man doing something inappropriate with a woman of any age. I never saw inappropriate habits,' she said after being asked if Kennedy ever got a massage.

'Now, somebody’s inappropriate and mine may be different, but – we’re not talking about anything that resembles the accusations that we’ve discussed here. So that would be a flat no to any man.'

Ghislaine Maxwell testified that she believes Jeffrey Epstein and Elon Max knew one another, she has no memory of a personal relationship between the two.

Speaking the Department of Justice, she was asked whether the former 'First Buddy' and Tesla CEO knew the late billionaire pedophile.

'I believe they did and the only reason I say that is not from my memory, but because I saw — I think I saw — my memory is that in discovery, they were communicating on email,' she said.

However, Maxwell did say that her memory is 'not as good as I would like it to be.'

Maxwell was asked if she instructed the girls on what Epstein liked.

'The idea that I would have to explain to a woman how to satisfy Mr Epstein is patently absurd, because he clearly was able to explain himself,' she said.

'He didn't need an interlocutor to explain what he liked. He's been doing this obviously or this – some version of this story his whole life and did not require any help from me.'

Maxwell was asked about Epstein's struggles to have sex with her during their relationship, which she said he told her were because he had erectile dysfunction.

Epstein started using dermal testosterone patches, which 'made him mean', and also took pills.

'He was ridiculous, because you shouldn't take more than one. But sometimes he had, like — I'm like, what are you doing? It's like unhealthy,' she said of the testosterone patches.

Blanche asked her that, from what she observed or saw or heard, did he continue to have challenges sexually over the years or did whatever his problem was get fixed.

'I think it was a lie,' she replied.

Blanche: 'You think he was lying about what?'

Maxwell: About his erectile dysfunction.

Blanche: Oh, you mean you never – you don't think he ever had any issues? You think he 25 just told you that?

Maxwell: 'Right. That is what I believe today, yes. But given — if any of the stories are true, even if he had erectile dysfunction, the thing had a priapism, for Christ's sake.

Ghislaine Maxwell told the Department of Justice she knew her romantic and sexual relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was over after he refused to spend time with her during the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

The revelation is part of the bombshell transcripts released from interviews with Maxwell in recent weeks.

At one point, she discusses when her relationship – often described as the billionaire pedophile's boyfriend, madam and right-hand woman – started to go south.

'By 1999 our relationship had foundered. We stopped having sexual relations in 1999, not full sex,' she said.

Maxwell noted that they sometimes would 'share a bedroom' but Epstein had another girlfriend at this point.

However, it took Epstein refusing to visit her after the attacks on New York City to make her understand it was over.

She definitively knew it was over after 9/11 because 'he wouldn’t see me at all' on the day of terror attacks despite only being five blocks away.

'And then I knew, as anyone did at that time, if you're not going to be there for someone in 9/11, youre never going to be there.'

Maxwell said Clinton and Epstein were only really connected through her and didn't meet independently of her.

'I saw them talk. I saw them sit down and have chats about, I don't know, because I wasn't either a party or didn't listen,' she said.

'I would characterize, originally anyway, Mr Epstein's interest in him because obviously he's the former president.

'But I never saw him – other than that, I saw them be friendly on the plane, but I never – I don't believe – I don't recollect, anyway, ever seeing them in any other context.

'I don't remember him at his house in New York. Like I said, I don't believe he ever went to that island.

'I don't think they had a relationship even when I was there.

'President Clinton liked me, and we got along terribly well. But I never saw that warmth or that – that warmth or however you want to characterize it, with Mr Epstein… so I didn't see that.

'I didn't see President Clinton being interested in Epstein. He was just a rich guy with a plane.'

Maxwell was asked if Clinton ever went to Epstein's private Caribbean island, where underage girls were kept in sexual slavery.

'He never. Absolutely never went. And I can be sure of that because there's no way he would've gone – I don't believe there's any way that he would've gone to the island, had I not been there,' she replied.

'Because I don't believe he had 16 an independent friendship, if you will, with Epstein. Did they speak? Did he go? Yes, but that's very different from going to spend time on an island.

'And plus, the story as told is so patently absurd that I flew him in the helicopter. I am a helicopter pilot, that is true.

'But the notion of me flying an ex-president in a machine. That would terrify me. I would never even take that responsibility. Can you imagine? Yeah, no.'

Maxwell said Clinton also never went to Epstein's various other properties, nor to her apartment in London when they met there.

Maxwell was asked if, 'for example', Clinton ever recieved a massage on Epstein's 'Lolita Express' private jet, or anywhere else.

'I don't believe he did,' she replied.

Blanche pressed her to explain why she didn't believe so.

'Well, because I don't — so that's a good question,' she said.

'The time that Epstein and President Clinton spent together, the only times I believe – well, obviously they traveled.

'There was that, you know, the plane, they went on the plane 26 times or whatever. That would be one journey. So they spent time on the plane together, and I don't believe there was ever a massage on the plane.

'So that would've been the only time that I think that President Clinton could have even received a massage. And he didn't, because I was there.'

Maxwell explained that she first met former president Bill Clinton at the White House for a charity benefit she attended with Epstein.

She spent more time with Clinton without Epstein because she was friends with people in the president's orbit, even attending his daughter Chelsea's wedding and going to Davos with him.

Maxwell persuaded Epstein to lend his private jet to Clinton for a trip to South America, which Maxwell went on but Epstein didn't.

She was asked how many times Clinton used the plane and said she thought it was twice.

Maxwell insisted 'President Clinton was my friend, not Epstein's friend'.

Maxwell confirmed Epstein knew Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey, meeting them on a flight to Africa with Bill Clinton.

Epstein also knew Naomi Campbell through her and they became ‘friends’, ‘friendly’.

'I believe she visited him in Palm Beach, and I believe she may have gone to the island and she may have gone to see his house in New York,' Maxwell said.

'Whether she went to New Mexico or Paris as well, maybe. They were friends or friendly.'

Maxwell spoke at length about the close friendship between Epstein and former Victoria's Secret boss Lex Wexner.

‘I want also to clarify something for you or clarify or underline. Wexner was, in my opinion, his closest friend in this time period from when I met him in '91, right, all the way until – well, 'til, I don't know,' Maxwell said.

'Because I wasn't that friendly with – well, I did travel with Mr Wexner, but Epstein told me that Wexner didn't want to be seen too much with me, because of my family problems.'

Maxwell believes Epstein told her Wexner didn’t want to be seen with her because of her dad’s scandals but now she thinks it was a way for Epstein to ditch her:

‘And now, actually today – not contemporaneously, but today I don't believe that that's even true,' she said.

'I think it was used as a means to not have me travel with him to Ohio or whatever. It was just a way to park me.

'And I believe that now, because within the discovery there was a lot of – well, not a lot, but there was some indications that he would actively tell other people to lie to me or conceal things from me, and that he never loved me and I wasn't his type.’

Maxwell said the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, was a ‘frenemy’ and that Ferguson ‘liked’ Epstein – her ‘female intuition’ told her so.

'I don't know if she liked me very much. I think my friendship with her ex-husband (Prince Andrew) – well, sometimes she really did like me and sometimes she didn't,' she said.

'So maybe a frenemy, I don't know.'

'It was always friendly when we were together, but I think that there was some latent hostility.

'That's how I felt about her. I would never – I was always friendly with her. I mean, she's – I mean, I've seen her many, many times and she's also super, super close with other people I'm very good friends with in England.

'I think that – I think that she liked Mr Epstein.'

Maxwell was asked if she knew Tesla owner Elon Musk and she explained they met for the first time in 2010 or 2011 at Google co-founder Sergey Brin's birthday party with somewhere between 30 and 50 people attending.

'[We] went to another friend's island. Somebody called Mr Pigozzi in the Caribbean and – not with Epstein, he was not there, to celebrate Sergey's birthday,' she said.

'And we were there together for, I want to say, three or four days, something like that in my memory. And Mr. Musk was present for that.'

Maxwell was transferred from the minimum-security federal prison in Florida she was serving 20 years in, to a minimum-security prison farm in Texas after she was interviewed by the DoJ.

Neither the DoJ nor Maxwell's lawyer have ever explained why.

Maxwell confirmed reports that she assembled a leather-bound album for Epstein's 50th birthday that was signed by numerous friends and associates.

Donald Trump reportedly contributed to the book with an imagined conversation between 'Donald' and 'Jeffrey' and a sketch of a naked woman.

He was also reportedly on a list of contributors elsewhere in the book.

Trump strongly denied having anything to do wih the book and Maxwell, likely angling for a pardon, backed him up.

'Do you remember President Trump submitting a letter or a card or a note,' she was asked.

Maxwell replied: 'I don't.'

Maxwell explained that copies of parts of the book were in her discovery during her trial, and Trump wasn't in any of them.

'But separate and apart from your discovery, do you remember one way or the other whether President Trump submitted a letter for his 50th birthday?' Blanche asked.

Maxwell replied: 'I do not remember.'

She also didn't remember if she saw the drawing of a naked woman Trump reportedly put in the album.

In the interview, Ghislaine Maxwell insisted there is no such thing as Jeffrey Epstein’s client list.

There has long been speculation that Epstein kept a list of high-profile individuals who had damaging information on – which he could then use to blackmail them.

‘There's no list. There's no list of people getting massages. I don't have – I can barely recall all the people. I can barely recall. I struggle to recall actual people that I met,’ she said.

Maxwell doubled down: ‘There's no list. There was never a list. There was no — or certainly none that I ever saw. None I ever heard of, none that I ever witnessed, none that I — there's no list.’

When asked if she had ever heard Epstein talk about such a list?, Maxwell responded: ‘Never.’

The convicted sex offender insisted: ‘This is one man. He's not some – they've made him into this. He's not that interesting. He's a disgusting guy who did terrible things to young kids.’

Maxwell said she believes another inmate may have killed Epstein, which flies in the face of claims his death was part of a conspiracy to prevent any blackmail.

'I do not believe he died by suicide, no,' she said. 'If it is indeed murder, I believe it was an internal situation.'

Maxwell has previously stated that she believes her former associate was murdered.

Maxwell was asked about Epstein's heart condition that hindered his ability to have sex, and pressed on if she knew anything else about it.

'Other than what he told me, no. He never shared anything, but he did take pills,' she replied.

'I don't know what – I don't know anything above that. And like I said, he did the testosterone, which made him mean.'

In a striking statement from newly released DOJ interview transcripts, Ghislaine Maxwell likened the frenzy surrounding her case to a Salem witch trial.

'Basically this is like a Salem witch trial,' Maxwell said. “People have gone and lost their minds for this thing. I understand that.'

She went on to describe the challenge of dealing with public outrage over a lifestyle most people can’t comprehend.

'But the issue is, how do you satisfy a mob who can't understand the lifestyle because it's like P. Diddy in Redux on TV with Clintons and Trump,' Maxwell added.

During the interview, Ghislaine Maxwell was asked about several high-profile individuals and both her and Jeffrey Epstein’s connections to them.

At one point, she was asked about disgraced former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who resigned in shame in 2021 amid a string of sexual harassment allegations.

Maxwell confirmed she knew Cuomo but ‘only because he was married to Kerry [Kennedy].

She also said she’d met his brother, but couldn’t remember his name.

‘And I think I knew his brother as well. What's -he has a brother, right? He's on TV. What's his name?’ she asked.

When told his name is Chris Cuomo, the former TV news anchor, Maxwell confirmed she had also met him but ‘just socially’.

‘I'm not close friends or anything, but because we — I was friends with Kerry and I met him a few times and I certainly met his brother as well a few times,’ she said.

When asked if Epstein knew Andrew or Chris Cuomo or Kerry Kennedy, she said: ‘I don't think so.’

She also said she did not recall any of the three flying on Epstein's plane or visiting him in Palm Beach or on his island.

Maxwell gave a cryptic response when she was asked if she ever had contact with Mossad – Israel's intelligence agency.

'Well, not deliberately,' she replied, which surprised her interviewer Todd Blanche.

Maxwell then repeated her answer.

Blanche didn't press her to elaborate, instead asking if Epstein ever received money from any intelligence agency, to which she said he hadn't, to her knowledge.

Ghislaine Maxwell revealed that a weird ‘stain’ was the ‘most memorable’ thing about her first meeting with Jeffrey Epstein in 1991.

After being set up by a friend, she went to meet him at his office in Manhattan.

‘I think the most memorable thing I can think about that is he was wearing a tie, which he didn't often do. It had a giant, seemed like a ketchup stain on it. So I was like, wow, okay. And that was how we met,’ she recalled.

She said they had tea in his office.

Maxwell found Epstein ‘very engaging and that was that.’

Ghislaine Maxwell told the DOJ how she met Jeffrey Epstein after going through a ‘bad break-up’ with her long-term boyfriend.

She was visiting New York and her friend offered to set her up with a date.

‘He's been dating my sister. You'll love him. He's looking for a wife,’ she recalled her friend saying.

Maxwell lamented that she was ‘edging towards 30’ at the time.

‘I don't need to tell you guys. That's a very important moment or a girl to, like, think about important things,’ she said.

So she was happy to meet with him.

It was around 1991 when she then met Epstein for the first time at his offices on Madison Garden.

In the freshly unsealed interview transcripts, Ghislaine Maxwell pushed back on long-standing claims about her wealth.

'There’s been a tremendous amount of reporting that I had a trust fund,' she told investigators. 'I never had a trust fund at any time.'

The denial cuts against years of speculation that Maxwell lived off family money and private funds while moving in elite circles with Jeffrey Epstein.

In newly released DOJ transcripts, Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell claimed the pair rarely had sex because of 'medical conditions' affecting them both.

Maxwell told investigator Todd Blanche that Epstein suffered from a heart condition 'which meant that he didn’t have intercourse a lot.'

She added that it 'suited [her] fine,' saying she also had a medical issue that 'precludes me having a lot of intercourse.'

In the interview with the DOJ, Ghislaine Maxwell said she believes Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself in a Manhattan prison.

Epstein was found dead in his prison cell on August 10, 2019, while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.

An autopsy determined he died by suicide.

When asked about Epstein's death, Maxwell said: 'I do not believe he died by suicide, no.'

However she said she did not have any insight or view into who killed him.

'I ask that because, if you don't believe that there's any truth to the allegations of blackmail or that he had kind of a list, or that he had reasons to have people hate him, why would somebody kill him in prison?' US Deputy AG Todd Blanche asked.

Maxwell responded: 'In prison, where I am, they will kill you or they will pay -somebody can pay a prisoner to kill you for $25 worth of commissary. That's about the going rate for a hit with a lock today.'

The Justice Department has released the transcripts and audio recordings from its interviews with convicted sex offender and Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.

The Daily Mail is reviewing the hundreds of pages of records now.