Ghislaine Maxwell’s brother blasted her late accuser as a “monster” and declared he “shed no tear” over her suicide during a fiery interview Friday.
Ian Maxwell, the 68-year-old older sibling of convicted sex-trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, insisted his sibling was in jail because of what he called the lies of Virginia Giuffre.
Prior to her death in April, she had consistently alleged Maxwell had solicited her for sex with billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his high society friends, including Prince Andrew, when she was 17.
“My sister’s been banged up for five years. It is very, very largely due to the actions, lies of this woman. I shed no tear for Virginia Giuffre,” Maxwell told British radio station LBC.
He went further still, “I think I know who the monster is here. It certainly isn’t my sister.”
His comments come after Donald Trump told reporters this week that he had fallen out with his old friend Epstein after Epstein “stole” staff from his exclusive members club Mar-a-Lago—including Guiffre, who worked there as a spa assistant in 2000.
The president is battling to shake off his long links to Epstein and Maxwell, which is blighting his second term, as he fights demands from his base to release the so-called Epstein files, which he had campaigned on.
While it has been reported that his name features heavily in the papers, there is no suggestion that Trump was involved in any criminality.
Giuffre, long regarded as Epstein’s most prominent survivor, died by suicide at her farm in Western Australia on April 25.
Her death came three years after she reached an estimated $16 million settlement with Prince Andrew—who denies wrongdoing—over allegations that Epstein and Maxwell trafficked her for sex with the royal when she was underage.
Maxwell’s on-air attack comes as President Donald Trump faces pressure to honor his promise to release the Epstein files, a trove of grand-jury transcripts and other records. A section of Trump’s base believes the files will reveal Epstein was killed and expose a high-powered network of pedophiles.
Late Wednesday, Justice Department lawyers urged two federal judges to unseal limited testimony, citing “abundant public interest.”
Ian Maxwell—who met Epstein just once, 25 years ago—argues full transparency would vindicate his sister. “I believe that transparency is generally the right way to go, and I believe transparency is the friend of my sister,” he told presenter Nick Ferrari.
Ghislaine Maxwell, 63, is serving a 20-year federal sentence in Florida and is seeking a U.S. Supreme Court review of her 2021 conviction.
A Manhattan jury found Maxwell lured teenage girls into Epstein’s trafficking ring, without requiring Giuffre’s testimony to convict her.
But Ian Maxwell maintained Giuffre was “a consummate liar from start to finish,” claiming prosecutors kept her off the witness stand “because she would have been eviscerated by the defense.”
Trump’s deputy attorney general and former personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, visited Maxwell in prison twice last month.
While it is not known what was discussed, the visits have raised the prospect that Trump could pardon her in return for testifying that he had not been involved in any criminality while socialising with her and Epstein.
Ian Maxwell said he believed there was a “good chance” his sister—who he said spent two years prior to her trial in “absolutely torturous circumstances”—could be released from jail after her upcoming appeal to the Supreme Court.
Ian Maxwell has faced his own legal troubles. After the 1991 death of his and Ghislaine’s media mogul father, Robert Maxwell, Ian and others were accused of swiping money from pension funds in an attempt to save the family’s debt-ridden empire. Ian, along with his brother Kevin, was acquitted in 1996 following an eight-month trial over the conspiracy allegations.
Despite claiming his sister was innocent, Ian Maxwell on Friday admitted he had suspicions about Epstein.
“He had a sort of dark charisma about him,” he said. “He was a very aggressive listener. You felt that he was taking things from you, taking information from you.
“I didn’t warm to him, I have to say. He’s not the kind of person I would have wanted to go for a drink with, if you see what I mean.”
He added: “But this was a relatively short time, maybe an hour or two, something like 25 years ago.”
