Who Is Ghislaine Maxwell? 7 Things You Need to Know About Jeffrey Epstein’s Partner-in-Crime
President Trump has not ruled out a pardon for the convicted sex trafficker. If she gets one, it'd be the biggest scandal in modern American history.
With the Trump administration’s cover-up of the Epstein files putting the notorious pedophile and sex trafficker who died in 2019 back in the headlines, one of the other worst people in the world is also back in the news again: Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell.
Yes, late last month, amid MAGA’s outrage over President Donald Trump’s refusal to release the files, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche (who, conveniently, is also the president’s former personal attorney) spent a whopping nine hours meeting with the convicted sex trafficker in federal prison. Fast forward to now, and inmate 02879-509 has just been transferred to a cushy minimum-security prison in Texas.
On Monday, the Trump administration was dealt a blow to it’s efforts to taper down criticism, when a federal judge denied the government’s request to unseal grand jury transcripts from the justice department’s investigation into Maxwell.
So, who was Ghislaine Maxwell before she became Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirator? How dangerous is she? And what’s the relationship between Maxwell and Trump? Here, from Zeteo, are seven things you need to know:
1. The British Socialite
Born to British media tycoon Robert Maxwell in 1961, Ghislaine Maxwell was the youngest of nine children and was rumored to be her father’s favorite.
Growing up in a life of luxury, Maxwell had no trouble climbing the social ladder. While she was in college, she befriended Prince Andrew, who would later be accused of raping one of Epstein’s most prominent victims, Virginia Giuffre. He, of course, denies these accusations, as well as his close friendship with Maxwell, despite hosting a birthday party for the socialite in 2000 at Sandringham and Maxwell appearing in the infamous photo of him and Giuffre.
Maxwell also became pals with US royals. In 2000, she and Epstein were photographed next to Trump and Melania at a Mar-a-Lago party, and in 2009, she not only attended Chelsea Clinton’s wedding but was also brought backstage at the Clinton Global Initiative summit.
Maxwell met Epstein by the early 1990s, as she was looking for a new start in New York, following the loss of her father as well as her family fortune. Their relationship started off as romantic, with prosecutors in 2021 revealing a series of images of the two kissing, traveling, and giving each other cringeworthy foot massages.
Maxwell introduced Epstein – who, at the time, was not very well-known – to her wide network of billionaires and politicians. Many of those people, including Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton, were later named in court files detailing Epstein’s various connections.