Ian Maxwell exclusive: ‘My sister Ghislaine is being used as Epstein’s scapegoat’

0:02The Telegraph

0:09As Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is arrested, his friend Ghislaine Maxwell sits behind bars for her part in the crimes committed by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, sentenced to 20 years. But her family believe she was used as a scapegoat for the crimes of Epstein, with many of the high-profile men mentioned in the files walking free. Today we speak exclusively to Ian Maxwell, the brother of Ghislaine, to ask why he still believes his sister is a convenient stand-in for a dead sex offender. Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Tim Stanley. And me, Camilla Tominey.

0:57Camilla, across Europe, significant figures are being investigated or even arrested in relation to Jeffrey Epstein, of which the most high profile, of course, is our very own Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. It's striking, isn't it, that in the United States, the only person who has been successfully convicted and put away for this crime is Ghislaine Maxwell, a British woman. Yes, from an extremely famous British media dynasty, the Maxwells, daughter of Robert. Yes, leading some to speculate that while America declines to prosecute its own elite, it has picked on the one woman who was seen as close to Jeffrey Epstein.

1:44And Maxwell recently appeared in a video link before the US House Oversight Committee as part of investigations tied to Epstein. She invoked the Fifth Amendment, Tim, so she refused to speak, although this was later clarified as her not wanting to jeopardise her own habeas corpus appeal against her original trial. That is being orchestrated by her legal team, but also her brother, Ian Maxwell, who's going to join us on the Daily Tea very shortly. there's been quite a lot of reporting of the conditions that Ghislaine Maxwell had been in in a prison in Florida where she spent a great deal of time in solitary confinement.

2:25She's now in an open prison. She hit the headlines last week with a suggestion that in order to seek clemency from President Trump she may have information that would be useful to Americans on the culpability of both him and his predecessor, Bill Clinton, which obviously made significant column inches both in the States and in the UK. White House officials have said that they do not see clemency as a presidential priority. Yes. And many commentators see her offer as a self-serving gambit rather than a genuine offer of cooperation. We should emphasise she was found guilty, she was convicted, she was put in prison.

3:10And families of the victims do not treat her claim that she was merely a bystander as a serious self-defence. Victims have described her as a manipulator who acts sweet, but also revealed a dark side and called her vicious. Multiple accounts suggest victims felt that Maxwell was, quote, just as responsible as Epstein and that she was the mastermind behind facilitating the abuse. The Epstein files contain an email from G. Maxwell to Epstein in 2015. Now, it was held in drafts, but it seemed to suggest that that photograph that was taken of Ghislaine, Prince Andrew as he was then known, and Virginia Giffray, who went on to be the prince's main accuser, was genuine.

4:01That came out in the Epstein files in recent days. But as we shall discover, the Maxwells still dispute whether the photograph is real. While the rest of the world tries to read conspiracy theories into the Epstein saga that put Epstein at the centre of a conspiracy, the Maxwell family seems to feel there is a conspiracy against their sister. And they have filed a habeas corpus suit with nine points in it, alleging various flaws with the trial, that effectively undermine Ghislaine's constitutional right to a fair trial. The whole thrust of it really, Tim, is this idea that she was considered to be guilty before innocent.

4:47She was named and then basically she was condemned before she even set foot in a courtroom. There's suggestions that one of the jurors lied about the fact that they were a victim of sexual abuse, which they therefore may have influenced their decision making. there's a number of different claims which the Maxwell family say adds up to this idea that the original trial was unsafe. Well, we're going to talk to Ian Maxwell, businessman and brother of Ghislaine and a very vocal believer in his sister's innocence. And he will talk to us about the release of the Epstein files, his sister's petition for freedom and why he feels she has been unfairly treated.

5:32Ian Maxwell, thank you very much for coming in. Good to speak to you. In the first instance, because we've had quite the events of the week involving a former member of the Royal Family, what's your reaction to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor being arrested in Norfolk and taken in for police questioning? Well, I mean, it's shocking, but perhaps not completely surprising, given that we know that the police had indicated They were looking into him. The important point, I think, is that he appears to have been arrested in connection with an allegation of misconduct in a public office rather than any sexual matters.

6:17And I think that's an important distinction to make. When it comes to your sister, you are fighting now for her to be released. Where do you stand on her guilt and innocence and what is it that you're fighting for her in relation to some sense of freedom? Well, I do happen to believe in my sister's innocence. And the fundamental issue and what she is fighting for and I'm supporting is her contention that she did not receive a fair trial. and the petition that is currently in front of the Federal District Court in the Southern District of New York, Judge Engelmeyer, is all about the claims, and there are nine of them, substantial claims that Ghislaine has put forward as to why she did not receive a fair trial.

7:15Now, the upshot of that petition will be one of three. It's denied. That's a shutout. An evidentiary hearing is ordered. In other words, that the claims are sufficiently substantial and the evidence that she has put forward in support of those claims is sufficiently compelling that an evidentiary hearing needs to take place and will take place on that basis. It is entirely possible that the judge could conclude that the nine claims are themselves in aggregate so serious that a mistrial would be declared. As to whether a new trial would be possible is another matter entirely because of the tremendous prejudice that Ghislaine will have suffered for six years in jail and these rolling releases and so on and so on.

8:12So that's what this is about as far as Gillen is concerned. Just to follow up on that for one moment, because you're saying that the original trial might not have been fair, but equally you've hit on something there, haven't you, following the release of the Epstein files, that it's almost impossible now to retry her in a fair way when you consider the global headlines that this story has attracted. It would be very hard to find a jury that isn't familiar with this story and hasn't already made up its mind. That's completely right. So this is, in a sense, binary. The release of the Epstein files, which everyone has jumped on with some famous people having been cut down, as it were, whether it's Mandelson or the Prince or whatever, the former Prince, But within the millions of pages that have been released are some exceptionally important documents from Ghislaine's perspective, which entirely support her contention that she did not receive a fair trial.

9:23Now, this isn't just us or Ghislaine trying to get sympathy. Obviously, she's convinced of her own innocence. And the issues that have come to light, be they the matter of the lying juror or the deliberate hiding of exculpatory information and evidence by the government, by the prosecutors, when they knew what they had. And under the American system, as a result of a Supreme Court order, they are obligated. The prosecution must hand over material and evidence that they find which may not help them but will help the defense. So by hiding that information or suppressing it or recklessly not ignoring it, it's a constitutional violation.

10:18and it goes right to the heart of whether or not the United States is a country under law or is it going to be run by the mob. I don't mean the mafia, I mean in other words mob justice rather than the rule of law. And by way of example, just last week my sister was compelled to attend a hearing by the Congressional Oversight Committee and she availed herself of the right of silence. She was pilloried for that constitutional right that she exercised freely and lawfully. It was like a crime. The Senate, the congressman, jumped about and immediately said she's hiding information about other people, she's seeking clemency from President Trump, without, in fact, just applying Occam's razor.

11:11And what is the simplest reason why Yilin refused to speak? It's because she has a colateral live petition in front of an independent judge. She took the view that if someone is going to make a decision about her future and about the fairness of the trial, it ought to be a judge in a court of law and not grandstanding congressmen and women in the Congress. and it's entirely possible if you are a fair-minded person to hold these two simple ideas in your head at the same time you can have tremendous sympathy for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein the real victims the girls who were underage and were reduced and worse what happened sexually abused, whatever.

12:02They have, to a very large extent, been financially compensated. You can also understand that under the rule of law, if there are compelling pieces of evidence which show that a trial that should be fair was not fair and that the defense was hamstrung from effectively impeaching government witnesses, demonstrating the lies of other government witnesses and so forth, then there is an inequality of arms to which the lying juror and therefore a non-impartial jury merely adds to the equation. And so it ought to be possible to have sympathy for the victims, but also to have sympathy, not just sympathy, but to have intellectual understanding and some capacity for dispassionate view as to Ghislaine's right to pursue the petition that she is pursuing.

13:02Sorry for that rather lengthy answer. No, no, not at all. You've already answered this, but I think it's important to go back over it for clarity. Is your position that Jeffrey Epstein, he was guilty of something, but that your sister was not or knew nothing about it? Or is it that actually Jeffrey Epstein's not as guilty of as many things as we believe? Well, the record shows that Jeffrey Epstein was guilty already. He had three indictments, by the way. And as a result of the first indictment, he was found guilty and served prison time. It's worth pointing out, because it's true, that my sister did not feature in any of those three indictments.

13:48Not in 2006, not in 2019, I think, not in whatever. The three indictments where there were many of the victims that we now know and names of and so on, although those have now been protected in this new release of documents, did not make any allegations against Ghislaine. Or if they did, they didn't make it to the grand jury. So that's a really important point. And it is critical that that evidence was not permitted to be run at the trial. Now, can you imagine such a thing? So to answer your question shortly, it is my view that Epstein was guilty. It is also my view that my sister is not guilty.

14:36That's to say innocent of the charges that she was convicted of. Right. I mean, okay, so the other people have been accused of things and they have not necessarily been accused of the crime of which your sister has been accused, But people have asked questions about their association with this man, who they knew to be a convicted pedophile. So I cannot relitigate Ghislaine's trial because I don't have the knowledge and the information to do it. You can probably very easily shoot down every point I might raise. It's almost pointless trying to do it. But what I can say is she was for a very long time perhaps the closest friend and confidant to a convicted pedophile who trafficked minors for sex.

15:14Is that in and of itself not something that greatly troubles you about your sister? Look, she was in a relationship with a physical relationship, as far as we know, with Epstein from roughly 1992 to about 97, 8, something in the later 90s. And the relationship then, that aspect of the relationship then changed and it became a very much more professional relationship where in fact she had substantial responsibilities for running, building, renovating, overseeing and managing many substantial properties that he owned. And then in about 2000, something like this 2000, certainly by 2002, 2003, she fell in love with another billionaire, a man called Ted Waite.

16:09And that relationship ran for at least eight years to 2011. And he was living in San Diego and she spent an enormous amount of time with him in San Diego. In the case of Epstein, they never lived together. Ghislaine had her own apartment in New York. Epstein had his own grand house. He never had a key to her place. She never had a key to his place. When she was questioned by Todd Blanche and was asked about this relationship, I think she, from memory, I think she said that she gradually came to the conclusion that he was seeing other people. And therefore, since she wanted to have a monogamous relationship and that wasn't going to happen, she distanced herself from him.

16:52This is a man who led an amazingly compartmentalized life. No question that that is true. And I think it's also true for a lot of people that knew him, who, of course, now ostensibly conveniently say, well, they never knew. But it's entirely possible that they did not know. And it's entirely possible, to my mind, that Ghislaine did not know the scale, the length, the whole shooting match that we now know to be the case. I think she admitted to ordering massages for him, but from women who were over age. Certainly the whole underage paedophilia aspect of this is entirely unknown to her and alien to her nature anyway.

17:37But, Mr Maxwell, and I'm conscious, by the way, that we're speaking to you, you are not on trial here. Sure. But I'm just going to suggest that so many women have come forward to suggest that it was Ghislaine who procured them, pimped them on behalf of Epstein. And because we now have these two Eiffel Tower-sized tranches of documents sort of really laying bare the true extent of Epstein's connections, depravity and so on, that it's very, very difficult to escape the conclusion. I mean, it's either Ghislaine is right or all the victims who accuse her are wrong. OK, let's deal with... So I'd like to make one point first about the release of documentation and then we will come to your question.

18:29There's been roughly three and a half million pages have been released since August, I think, of last year. The reason I want to stop and talk about that for a second is because it is perhaps the most compelling reason why Ghislaine decided not, or on advice, not to speak to Congress. because she's not had access to any of these pages except what she's seen in the press. She has no computer. She's written to the judge to request a computer so that she can go with the dates on which he's asked for a response and so on. So Ghislaine's own knowledge of the documentation is seen through a keyhole.

19:14She's heard about it. She's read about it. But she can't access it. She can't sensibly make any comment about it. So I just wanted to, because I forgot to make that point when we were talking about Congress. Coming down to the women. Time goes by. We get to the trial. Out of the hundreds of women that we know now were victims that have been compensated through the Epstein Fund, Foundation or whatever it's called, the prosecution ends up producing four witnesses. Two of those witnesses, their testimony was ordered by the judge to the jury, could not be used to convict Gillen because the girls were over age at the relevant points.

20:09A third girl involved in trafficking across borders, I think it was, that particular charge failed and the jury did not convict on it. It is interesting that a huge number of these women came out late in the day. As far as the victims are concerned, they're entitled to receive compensation. I mean, if they were raped and sexually abused, one would hope that the Epstein estate would pay them some compensation. The Epstein estate have paid them considerable amounts of money. The bulk of those funds, by the way, came from two banks, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan, who paid over perhaps 400 million between them.

20:57So I'm not saying that the victims are not entitled to compensation. Of course they are. the standard at which the victims were compensated we don't know because we don't know what basis on which it was done at the inside the epstein fire but this has generated an immense amount of money and i think it is it needs to be said you cannot completely ignore the realities of what is represented here, or indeed the ages of many of these victims, most of them indeed over the age of consent, far from being under the age of consent. At what point do women cease to have agency in reality? You're 21, 22, 23 years old.

21:48Well, you can be a grown woman and be coerced and sexually abused and raped, and you can have other people be complicit in that who will therefore be found guilty of some kind of conspiracy? You can, but denying the agency of the ladies is also something that I think should be looked at. I think you have to be at least knowledgeable that this is not entirely a one-way street. Okay. Do you feel perhaps that there has been such momentum in pursuing your sister because Jeffrey Epstein is dead. There was a feeling that someone ought to pay and Gillian was the closest person to him. She was the closest person to him, certainly for up until the mid-90s.

22:41She continued to maintain a friendship with him, I think at a greater distance. But I think also so many other people continue to maintain friendships or relations of one kind or another with Epstein. And the fact is that Ghislaine is the only person in jail, a woman, no previous record. You have a situation where somebody like P. Diddy Coombs, a billionaire, found out of the same federal court in Southern District of New York, on the same charge, receives four and a half years for extreme physical battery. And the most terrible thing that he did to women in his circle, my sister receives 20 years.

23:28I mean, it's outrageous and completely shocking. It's another one of the claims, by the way, that the judge got the sentencing guidelines wrong. And one of the heinous events of the trial really shocking, is that women who had no position in the trial at all, who were not witnesses, who weren't called, who weren't, I'm thinking in particular of Virginia Giffray, were nonetheless allowed to stand up and make impact statements. And it was through the impact statement, notably of Virginia Giffray, that a huge amount of her completely unproven, and indeed in some cases His proven statements, lies, I'm telling you, enabled the judge to whack on an extra few years on Ghislaine's sentence.

24:18Do you have a view on whether Jeffrey Epstein killed himself in prison? I think he did kill himself. I'm content with that verdict. His brother Mark has spoken to the Daily Tea and absolutely insists that he didn't. I've seen that. I mean, obviously, look, I met Jeffrey Epstein once for about two hours at a lunch with my sister and my brother. You've met him as much as Alistair Campbell has met him. Okay. Something I like to remind Al of whenever I can. So I met him 30 years ago for a couple of hours over lunch. My sister introduced us. My brother was there. And I remember the occasion was the first time I had left the UK since my own trial, which came to an end in January 96.

25:08Remind us what you were investigated for. I know you were cleared. Yes, my brother and I were tried following the death of our father on a conspiracy to defraud charges, which the trial ran from May 1995 to January 1996. And we were exonerated, both Kevin and me and another colleague who was on trial with us. So I remember this trip, the first time I'd been to America for about five years. And, you know, I was really looking forward to it. So I met Epstein. And my recollection of him was that he was clearly an intelligent man, very intelligent guy. He had a kind of dark charisma. He was a very aggressive listener, aggressive in the sense that you felt he was pulling things from you.

26:02Whatever you had to say, he was kind of cutting it, slicing it and taking it. He didn't give much out going in the other direction. In fact, very little. So I wouldn't describe him as clubbable. I didn't warm to him. He's not someone I would have asked to go for a pint around the corner. But I never met him again. I know from Ghislaine that he thoroughly disapproved of my brother and me on the grounds that had we gone down, she would have been connected with two fraudsters. and I think he was probably not best pleased to even meet us. But that's curious, isn't it? Because your late father wasn't without controversy himself.

26:44Ghislaine already had a link. I mean, you probably resent terms like this, but to the Maxwell dynasty, your father dying in what some consider to be suspicious circumstances. I don't know if you do, Ian. We have a difference of opinion as between Ghislaine and the rest of the family. Ghislaine thinks he was murdered. The rest of the family are content with the view that it was an accident and that he did fall off his boat. You've got to be somebody on boats to know that men tend to pee over the side of boats. That's the way it's done, even on big boats. And there was one particular position on the Lede-Guelin, the name of his boat, where there was no side, no metallic side.

27:32that was just a thin nylon cord next to where the tender could then be pushed out to sea. And that was when men used to relieve themselves on the Lady Gulen. So my father was a very overweight man, age 68, 9, and the boat is traveling 10, 12 knots. I'm not entirely certain of the state of the sea. He has one lung. He's not well. it would have been easily imaginable that he was swaying or tilting and he tips into the sea. The forensics show that he had very, very significant tears in the back of his left or right shoulder, consistent with trying to hang on to a step, anything he could. So that seems to me to be reasonably compelling.

28:44There is an email exchange in the files that's come out in which Epstein entertains the possibility that he was murdered, even maybe by Mossad. So that is your sister's view then. Is that something they might have been on the same wavelength about? It's entirely possible. I mean, you know, I've read, as I'm sure you both have, quite a bit of talk about Epstein being an asset of one agency or another, the Russians, Mossad. My father certainly did, when he was alive, have links, mostly historic, I think, certainly with the British intelligence service because he operated for them in Berlin right at the end of the war, 1945-46.

29:34We know that Israel was very grateful to him at the time of the War of Independence because he procured parts, sometimes even the whole aeroplane or Spitfires and so forth, to help the Israeli Air Force. So we know that happened. We know that driving forward 40, 50 years, that he was important in tipping off Israel, presumably the Mossad, about the spy Vanunu, who was shopping Israel's nuclear secrets around. So these are kind of factual. And I know, because he told me himself, so I'm speaking from my own knowledge here, that when he would meet general secretaries of the Soviet Communist Party, he would come back and report himself to Number 10, to Charles Powell, Margaret Thatcher, whatever.

30:30And that was a pretty standard thing to do. I think if you met the leadership of a foreign country, it was considered rather useful for you to be debriefed. But then, I mean, it is interesting, but it does remain unproven. And so much evidence seems to suggest that Epstein was bribing people, engaging people in honey traps, taking huge amounts of photographs and filming people within his properties, which Ghislaine also seems to have been involved in. I mean, she was taking a lot of photos. What do you think of that analysis of his behaviour? I don't know about the films. There was quite a lot of remark about every room had a camera and so forth.

31:18I don't know if that's been stood up, actually. I would think it's probably unlikely. There does seem to be an astonishing number of photographs. I do agree with you. My sister certainly appears in many photographs. She may well have taken a number of photographs herself. As far as Ghislaine's concerned, I think this is relatively innocent and I'm not going to read much into it as far as Epstein's concerned and the whole thesis that he was gathering embarrassing material on people. Well, let's just examine that more closely. Let's take the president of the United States, Donald Trump. Now, in between his two terms, it seems to me impossible to think that the Democrats did not make a big effort to see what was in these files.

32:12They had them for four years. Do you not think that some smoking gun would have come out? One would have thought so. It still hasn't come out. And you can see what's going on here in Congress. Whichever side of the aisle you are, you're using Epstein, and particularly Ghislaine, to bash one president or another president. So if you are a Republican, you're using her to bash Bill Clinton. And if you're a Democrat, you're using her to bash Donald Trump. I have to say at that point, she features in perhaps the smokiest gun of all, which is the photo of Andrew, Virginia Dufresne, and your sister. And in fact, arguably, it's the most important image of the entire saga.

33:03It's one of the images of the 21st century. Historians will be looking at that photo. In your opinion, is it real? And do you know the context to it? I'll still with the context for a minute. My sister has said that she does recognize her house because the Roman which they are in was the study of her little muse house at Kenleton Street. Pretty much everything else about it is disputed. So whichever perspective you take, let's take Virginia Dufresne's perspective. It's her picture. So she says this happened on March the 10th. It was a Saturday. I was staying in Ghislaine's house. She woke me up that morning, sleepyhead, let's go shopping.

33:58You're going to meet a prince today. And we go shopping all day long. And she finds me something. But I decide to get into this skimpy jeans and singlet. Even though we know, because we've checked, that March 10, 2001 was one of the coldest March 10s in a long time. seems a little unlikely. Her position is that the prince arrives. She's so excited to see him that she rushes upstairs and gets her camera, one of these Instamatics, supposedly hands it to Epstein. And although they've never met, the prince is induced somehow to put his hand around this young girl. Ghislaine is maneuvered into position.

34:45The picture is taken. And they then go to a tramp. And God knows the prince buys her a drink. And heaven knows. And then this terror of sex occurs. And so she goes to America. She goes to Walgreens to develop this. And in her book, and everything I've just told you is from her book, because I remember it. She says, I know when this happened because it's got the Walgren stamp on the back of the photograph, 13 March, so on the Monday. Now, that's what Virginia Dufresne has said about this. her lawyer David Boyce in 2023 I think on Piers Morgan says specifically we know this is a genuine picture because it's got the Walgreens stamp on the back of it when you go to the FBI's evidence about this photograph, which has been now released within the Epstein files.

35:52There is no stamp on the back of that photograph. It is not an original. The Daily Mail has not been able to and has never produced the image, which, after all, was published in the Daily Mail. And it's not clear if it's an original or it's not an original. and as soon as it's not an original and as soon as it starts to be discussed and debated and there are different points of view, it becomes contentious. Now let's look at it from Ghislaine's perspective. Ghislaine flew to London because on the 11th of March, the Sunday, was my mother's 80th birthday party. and everybody had gathered at the home of my brother where this party was taking place on the Saturday, including my sister.

36:48There are people, not just family members, but other friends who remember Ghislaine at the party. And it is completely impossible for Ghislaine to be in two places at once. So when you filter all these pieces of information from different perspectives, and you say, is this real? I conclude as follows. It is without doubt the core image of this entire sorry scandal. It is central to everybody's perception of what young women, royalty, Ghislaine, Epstein behind the camera, as usual in the dark, away from the action. So in some sense, it doesn't really matter if it's real or if it isn't real. It doesn't actually show anything, does it?

37:48The prince isn't raping her. If you don't know what went on to happen, it's a relatively innocuous picture. So I have not concluded that it is an original and I have trouble with it. I know that Ghislaine herself has always disputed the authenticity of the image published by the Daily Mail. People have said, oh, she's corroborated in the email of September 2015. I don't regard that as corroboration. First of all, it's a draft, draft email. Secondly, we don't know if Ghislaine actually sent it. Thirdly, she doesn't reference that photograph. She references our photograph. So I would dismiss that myself.

38:36I'm content to say I don't know is the short answer. But to repeat, it doesn't matter because that genie has come out of the box and we're living with it and we're living with its consequences. I mean, it was inconsequential until the Andrew, formerly known as Prince, denied any knowledge of ever meeting this girl. And then it takes on a new significance because it captures him in a lie in the same way that both the former Duke of York and his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, are caught in the lie of suggesting they've broken off contact with Epstein, when actually they've not just maintained a gushing friendship, but stayed at his place in New York.

39:18And in the case of what now Andrew is accused of, allegedly leaked confidential documents to him while he's trade envoy. Just on Ghislaine, because I'm intrigued by this from your perspective, that she meets Epstein, it coincides with the death of your father, to whom she was incredibly close. and some people have questioned how this well-educated woman who was the apple of your father's eye very sophisticated and well-spoken very memorably addresses the press after he has fallen off the Lady Ghislaine many have said that there was a sequence of events here and she found in Epstein somebody who she'd lost because I think people want to try and get inside the mind of a woman who clearly knows her own mind and how she could have been tangled in this web for so long.

40:17What's your view on that? I think, you know, my father was an alpha male. There's no question about it. And, you know, he was dominant, a very tough father to have, a very tough act to follow. But he's the only father that I know and he's the only father that Guillen knows. So he dies in these really shocking circumstances. I am back at the office with my brother. The whole empire is swaying one way or another. I'm at Mirror Group. My brother's at Maxwell Communications. We are just beyond busy trying to save this enterprise. 40 ,000 people that work for it. Guillen by then was in New York. She was on a beat for The European, which I used to be the publisher of, and selling space, advertising and so on.

41:15And it became very, very clear to Kevin and me very soon, within a week or two of our father's death, that Guillaume was probably much better off staying in America than coming back here. Let us deal with whatever we have to deal with. Live your life the best you can. so in that context at some point in early 92 possibly late 91 but around that period of time she's introduced to epstein by a girlfriend that's what she told tom blanche and so i just want to scotch whatever rumors have ever abounded that epstein knew my father or that somehow my father had introduced Epstein. I don't buy that. And I don't think most people who know this story do either.

42:06So she's clearly very vulnerable, very, very vulnerable. You know, her father's died. The empire is imploding. Her brothers are under attack. There's no money. She's frightened. She's in an alien environment. Her name is no longer in lights. It's the antithesis. And so for somebody as sophisticated and smart as Epstein, it's entirely possible that he sees this mark as a brilliant mark for him. You know, somebody who's got all the skills, clearly will have contacts, clearly is at the right kush, social kush, and so forth. And it's good for Epstein. And it's also good for Gehlen And in the sense that he can help her and look after her and protect her and so on.

43:03So there was a mutuality of interest. I'm not entirely, you couldn't replace Bob Maxwell with Epstein. What did Epstein have? He had a lot of money. He clearly was an intelligent guy. Many of the people that he came to know were in top levels of science and academia. And this was a world very, very familiar to Ghislaine. I can see that he could have reeled her in relatively quickly. And then when you're in that kind of a world, it's not so easy to walk away from it. No. But as a brother, don't you look at it and say to yourself, God, I wish she'd never met him. You don't need me to say that. She wishes that she had never met him.

43:51But then you also understand that people will not have any sympathy at all with your portrayal of Ghislaine as the victim here. I'm not saying that Ghislaine is a victim here. We know who the victims are and the sympathy of the world lies with the victims of Epstein. But as I said at the start of this conversation, it is entirely possible for fair minded people to hold these two ideas that whilst having sympathy for the victims, If we live in a country governed by the rule of law, then you cannot say, because Ghislaine is some sort of algorithmically driven version of Myra Hindley in the 21st century, that she is not entitled to the dignity of a court process that is fair and right.

44:43If that is not happening, then tomorrow it's your brother or your sister that's going to get caught up here. And because she's not the flavor of the month, everybody piles in on her. The view of the Congress is that, you know, she's beyond the pale and so on. Well, I have no time for those people at all. They're using the victims essentially as props for their own political machinations, which is truly shocking. So there is a case, I think, for people simply, they should be able to say, Ghislaine is entitled to her day in court. Not in the court of public opinion. They've already made that decision.

45:27But in a proper court. A final question. I was struck reading your case against the government at the amount of time she had spent in solitary confinement. Have the conditions of her imprisonment greatly changed? In your opinion, have they improved? What is life like for Ghislaine right now? Yes, they've greatly changed. Yes, they've improved. But anything would be better than 600 days of isolation and 24-7 suicide watch. She was in a five square meter cell. A light was shone in her eyes every 15 minutes to wake her up, lest she was deemed she was going to swallow her tongue or somehow die, even though she was under the camera watch.

46:16So the conditions were brutal. And we know that they were approved by William Barr himself because in evidence he gave to Congress in September 2025, he said the regime was harsh. this is a 62 year old woman with no previous convictions, no evidence of public danger and so on. The court determined that Ghislaine's conditions were not for them to interfere with, that was for the Bureau of Prisons. So she lives that regime. She's brought to her trial in four point shackles, that's to say hands and feet. And people wonder why she didn't testify. At trial, forget about Congress. And her position was that the government had not proved its case.

47:12We now know from the habeas petition, not only that it had not proved its case, but it had purposefully ensured that she couldn't prove her case. So they hollowed her out physically for 600 days and then hollowed out her defense. Because in America, you're not designed to stand up and have a trial. You're designed just to take it up the backside. So this is not Gillian's perception of law. She's brought up in England. This is not the way these things happen here. We have contempt. And therefore, all of the perp walk, the grotesque press conference held at the day of her arrest, which effectively said this woman is guilty from the get go.

47:59And then the entire media attack. Netflix, all kinds of stuff. All the victims at that time came out and told these terrible tales and so forth. So she was guilty at the point of impact of her trial, and there was no way that was going to change. Luckily, when she was convicted, she was then sentenced and she goes to Tallahassee. That's a so-called low-level women's prison in Florida. Well, it may be low-level, but it was the most brutal, brutal place you could imagine. The noise was cacophonous. Ghislaine was constantly, constantly under one threat or another. Other inmates came and threatened her with razor blades and all kinds of stuff.

48:52She was frightened. She was frightened for her life. And I'm not exaggerating. Now, the idea that Todd Blanche comes down like some sort of deus ex-mash and says, Honey, just say nice things about the president. I'll get you transferred out of here in the morning. No one will know. It's ridiculous. If they had not taken her out and she had died on the government's watch in Tallahassee, how would America have defended it? They lost Epstein and then they lose Maxwell. But she's now in an open prison in Texas and those conditions are better. But final, final question, I promise, Ian Maxwell. Is there a hope of a presidential pardon?

49:35There's always a hope of a presidential pardon with this president. But how will that reflect on Donald Trump? I mean, if you want to talk the politics of this, I wouldn't imagine that he would be considering such a thing. We know that he has said that he hasn't thought about it, but he has the power to do it. So he hasn't expressly said he won't, and he hasn't ruled it out. So therefore, if he hasn't ruled it out, you must rule it in. So there are two events happening to the president between now and the end of his time. The first event is the midterm elections this year. And clearly, he's not going to take any kind of a decision of that prior to the midterms to see which way it cuts.

50:25And then depending on the result of that, he's got to decide whether or not he's essentially a lame ducker. He's just going to lay low. But that's not his style. So I could imagine that he could grant clemency. But we are of the view that the habeas petition that she has filed is strong and getting stronger. As these releases come out, we now have significant testimony from Mr. Acosta relating to the non-prosecution agreement, which is pretty clear was a global non-prosecution agreement and Ghislaine should never have been prosecuted at all. So we are hopeful that that is what's going to prevail.

51:18If it fails, and I have to be honest with you and say these things are more likely to fail, but not because habeas petitions haven't got about a 2 % success rate and everything that Ghislaine has tried to do has failed. So therefore, I've got to be clear-eyed about it and assume that it may well fail. Then there is the issue of clemency. Whether or not that happens, we don't know. And finally, if all of that goes to pot, I think we would like to see Ghislaine repatriated, either to the UK or to France, which is a citizen of both, and hope that she would have a better life in those circumstances.

51:58And Ian Maxwell, thank you very much. Welcome. We'll be back on Monday, 5 p.m.

52:28Thank you.