Inside Ghislaine Maxwell’s absurd deposition — ‘What do you mean by ‘prostitution’?’
Not since President Bill Clinton said, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is,” has the world seen such disingenuous parsing.
Ghislaine Maxwell, in a freshly unsealed deposition from 2016 that was released Thursday, surpassed her good friend Bill in cynical misunderstandings of simple words and concepts.
Pressed on what she knew about child-sex-trafficker-rapist Jeffrey Epstein, for whom she allegedly recruited underage girls — girls she, too, allegedly sexually abused — Maxwell sounded like someone who barely speaks English or has suffered a massive brain bleed.
On whether she ever recruited females for Epstein: “First of all, can you please clarify the question. I don’t understand what you mean by ‘female.’ I don’t understand what you mean by ‘recruit.’ ”
The lawyer representing alleged victim Virginia Giuffre asked Maxwell if she identified as female.
“Again,” Maxwell said, “I don’t understand what ‘female’ — I am a 54-year-old woman.”
This is someone who flew around the world, entertaining at least one U.S. president, heads of state, royalty — Prince Andrew, the world will never let you escape this — billionaires, titans of tech and industry. Yet Maxwell repeatedly requested clarifications such as:
“What do you mean by ‘romantic’?”
“What do you mean by ‘know’?”
“What do you mean by ‘prostitution’?”
“What’s a sex toy?”
To the question, “Did she look like a child?” Maxwell responds, “I don’t know what you mean, if she looked like a child.”
On whether she preyed on school grounds for schoolgirls: “What do you mean by ‘school’? Let’s characterize ‘school.’ ”
Incredibly, only one person banged the table in frustration here, and it wasn’t the interrogating lawyer. It was Maxwell.
Q: “Did you or Jeffrey Epstein ever ask any female to become pregnant and carry Jeffrey Epstein’s baby for you or for Jeffrey?”
Ghislaine: “You need to be very specific.”
Upon the presentation of a police report in which 30 minor children alleged Epstein sexually abused them — one 13-year-old girl “upset [and] crying hysterically”:
“Do you believe that Jeffrey Epstein abused minor children?”
Ghislaine: “Can you explain what you mean by the question actually?”
Like the psychopath she is, Maxwell displayed no emotion when questioned about the most disgusting things anyone could be accused of: grooming young girls and teenagers as sex slaves, abusing them, forcing them to have sex with much older men, taking their passports and rendering them powerless. Not even when asked about two 12-year-old girls allegedly presented to Epstein as a birthday present did Maxwell flinch.
Instead, she expressed indignity at this sordid line of questioning — “You don’t ask me questions like that!” she snapped at one point — and, incredibly, condescended to the white-shoe lawyer conducting this deposition that “perhaps you are not really familiar with what massage is.”
“I am,” the lawyer says. “I don’t need a lecture on massage.”
“I think you do.”
“Massage,” in Epstein’s realm, was code for sex with minors. Self-awareness is clearly not Maxwell’s strong suit.
Instead, she’s very concerned here with making sure her interlocutors know just how essential she was to Epstein’s empire. She was something of the house photographer, she said, and while sure, there may have been a nude photo shoot here or there, “I mostly take pictures of landscapes and things . . . architectural pieces.”
Her job, she said, was also to hire architects, chefs, interior decorators, gardeners, and pilots — though she expressed confusion as to whether she technically “interviewed” them before “hiring” them.
A regular Lady of the Manor who saw nothing, heard nothing, and is sure of nothing except that Guiffre is making this all up for money and fame (exactly the kind of fame every young girl dreams of, right?).
“An awful fantasist,” Maxwell called Giuffre, “ . . . an absolute total liar and you all know she lied on multiple things . . . her entire story is one giant tissue of lies.”
An unfortunate image, that tissue.
How telling that Maxwell didn’t prevaricate here. For someone who claims not to know anything about this decades-long criminal enterprise, how could Maxwell have been so sure Giuffre is a liar who is lying about everything? After all, you can’t prove a negative.
This entire deposition is yet another violation of Epstein’s victims. But what it lacks in detail it more than makes up for in character study, revealing Maxwell as the vile, vainglorious, supercilious and unremorseful criminal she’s accused of being.
Share this article:
Source: Read Full Article