I feel so bad for dear friend Andrew, says Ghislaine Maxwell in first prison interview since sex trafficking conviction
GHISLAINE Maxwell has spoken for the first time from jail about her “dear friend” Prince Andrew.
In a world exclusive interview from the prison where she is serving 20 years for trafficking teenage girls, she confessed: “I feel so bad for him. I follow what is happening to him.’’
Maxwell, 60, appeared shaken when told the Prince’s lawyers had claimed they were never close, before adding sadly: “I accept that this friendship could not survive my conviction.
“He is paying such a price for the association. I consider him a dear friend. I care about him.”
It comes as the Duke of York struggles to rescue his image in the face of hostile public opinion and the heartbreak of his mother the Queen’s death.
In two explosive interviews, one of which was conducted face-to-face in prison, Maxwell even told how she is now convinced Andrew is a victim of faked evidence.
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She also spoke for the first time of her close friendships with former US Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, and her association with “the greatest regret of my life’’, paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Our first meeting, conducted as part of an upcoming CBS-Paramount Plus special, took place in June this year inside New York’s notorious Metropolitan Detention Centre, followed by another lengthy interview conducted remotely from her current jail in Florida.
Speaking for the first time since her arrest in July 2020, Maxwell talked of her regrets over her association with billionaire financier and sex abuser Epstein, claiming it had turned her into a “wicked witch” hate figure and damaged those she loved. And she revealed she longs to turn back the clock.
“I said in my court statement that meeting Epstein was the greatest mistake of my life,” Maxwell admits.
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“And obviously, if I could go back today, I would avoid meeting him, and I would make different choices.”
Andrew was not the only friend she lost over her links to the tycoon, who was found dead in his cell, aged 66, in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Former US President Bill Clinton, who travelled on the tycoon’s “Lolita Express” private jet, was another relationship she valued.
“It was a special friendship, which continued over the years,” she said.
“We had lots in common. I feel bad that he is another victim, only because of his association with Jeffrey. I understand he, like others, can no longer consider me as a friend.”
Heavy price
One of the few people to have shown her any loyalty, she says, is former President Donald Trump.
“We knew each other and mingled in the same circles, in New York, Palm Beach. I was very grateful when he wished me well after (the arrest). He got bad media for it, but he dared, while others didn’t.
“I was honoured he remembered me. Well, he is known to say what he thinks. It gave me a big boost.”
Maxwell complained friends were “cancelled” just for knowing her.
“There are many people who have been impacted by this story,” she said. “Friends of mine who never even met Epstein lost their jobs. People who literally had nothing to do with him whatsoever have been cancelled.
“For all those people . . . I think it’s been a very heavy price that has been paid by the cancel culture. It’s been very difficult for a lot of people.”
Despite that, she admitted she was hurt by the lack of loyalty from so-called friends once desperate for a place in her social circle.
“There are people who have disappointed me and there are people I’m surprised have not, you know, been a little more proactive,” she said. “I completely understand people have livelihoods to protect . . . children to protect.
“But having said that, there are people who have stood by me privately. Quite a few, actually, and I’m extremely appreciative of their private support.
“I have friends who I have literally known my entire life since I was at kindergarten. It’s good to know there are people out there who know who I am, really.”
As for the others, Maxwell believes they have accepted a false version of her as the “Wicked Witch” in Epstein’s story. “All this is a fictional version of me,” she said. “It has been created to fit the storyline. It has absolutely nothing to do with who I am.
There are many people who have been impacted by this story.
“I find it curious that so many people choose to contribute to the fake, created version, sort of like a Disney character, the Wicked Witch, if you will. The real people who know me and still love me have never spoken.”
An intelligent woman who graduated from Oxford University with a modern languages degree — and says she has worked all her life — Maxwell hates to show weakness.
She said: “I think there are many women who can identify with my story. Many have either fallen in love with or had relationships with men that in hindsight they look back on and say, ‘What was I thinking?’ I imagine there’s not a woman on the planet who would not think that about one or other of their boyfriends.”
But she said she would not discuss individuals — Epstein, Prince Andrew or Scott Borgerson, the husband who reportedly dumped her in a prison phone call — until her appeal has been heard.
Maxwell even refused to deny reports she and Andrew were once a couple, claiming: “I have read and seen and heard and had reported to me so many monstrous inaccuracies that I can’t even start to pick apart all of them.
“If I pick apart one and don’t address all the others, it’s going to be, ‘Well, she said no to this. What about all those others?’
“So I’m not going to discuss anything of that nature. After the appeal, I’m going to be super-happy to address with you any of those things.”
But could they become friends in the future? She said: “I don’t have an expectation. People who I have been friends with — and very close friends with . . . I can’t think about what they will want to do or not do.”
In an astonishing U-turn, Maxwell branded one of the most damaging exhibits in the case against Andrew a forgery . . . the infamous photo of him with his hand clutching teenage sex slave Virginia Giuffre’s bare midriff.
'This photo is not real'
Said to have been taken at Maxwell’s London home in March 2001, it shows her standing in the background, grinning broadly.
“This photo is not real,” she insisted, backing Andrew’s earlier claim.
“There was never an original one produced.” She refused to say more on Giuffre — who sued the Prince for sex abuse and accepted a reported $12million in damages earlier this year — adding, with a dismissive wave: “I don’t even want to start talking about Virginia.”
The Prince dropped his defence against Giuffre’s lawsuit and agreed to pay up — turning him into the Palace pariah, banned from royal duties — after a damaging 2015 email from Ghislaine emerged.
Epstein’s lawyer Alan Dershowitz had asked her if the picture was real. She replied: “It looks real. I think it is.”
Challenged on that now, Maxwell insisted: “I don’t recognise that picture and I don’t believe it is a real picture.” Then she claimed that all she meant to say in that email was that she recognised her own house.
“I said, it is that image that, whatever it is, I recognise it as my house,” she explained in a rambling response. “But I have come to discover that image I don’t believe is true. And the original has never been produced because it doesn’t exist. I don’t believe that image is a true image.”
So did she reply to Dershowitz without thinking? “If you see a photograph and it’s a photograph of you in your home, and someone says to you, is that a picture of you? So you don’t question.
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It would never occur to me that at that time that somebody would have created a photograph or, you know, done something with a picture . . . I recognised the surroundings of that photograph, nothing more than that.”
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Maxwell claims there are “over 50 problems with the picture” that led her to come to the conclusion that it was a fake.
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