Trump s friendship with Ghislaine Maxwell

Trump’s friendship with Ghislaine Maxwell was once a liability.
Now it could save him
Story by Benedict Smith •


Donald Trump and Ghislaine Maxwell at the Anand Jon Fashion Show in New York City on Sept 18, 2000 - Patrick McMullan/Getty

Donald Trump was “crazy” about Ghislaine Maxwell from the very start.

Maxwell, the Oxford-educated daughter of a billionaire publishing tycoon, was exactly the kind of company the future US president liked to keep in New York in the 80s.

The pair were regular fixtures in the elite Manhattan and Palm Beach social scenes, attending the same parties at private clubs and on million-dollar yachts.

More than 30 years later, Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence for procuring underage girls for her paedophile ex-boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein, and Mr Trump has been returned to the most powerful office in the world for a second time.

The president’s relationship with the couple has become his biggest political liability.

Donald Trump with then-girlfriend Melania, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at the Mar-a-Lago club, Florida, in Feb 2000 - Davidoff Studios/Getty Images

On Tuesday, the Trump administration announced the Department of Justice (DoJ) was seeking to speak to Maxwell about what she knew of the so-called Epstein files.

Mr Trump has been under immense pressure from Republicans and his Maga base after the DoJ and FBI said earlier this month that nothing would be shared with the public, and that the financier had taken his own life.

Related video: Lawrence: Trump has never said 'I wish her well' to any Epstein victims, just Ghislaine Maxwell (MSNBC)

Donald Trump knew nothing about what we were doing to
MSNBC

Their refusal to engage with the case further only served to increase the furor around it – and Mr Trump’s links to the couple.

Some Maga supporters saw it as confirmation that the “deep state” was conspiring to protect elites by keeping information back, including an Epstein “list” of names.

Maxwell, like the Trump administration, denies the existence of such a list, according to her brother.

Meanwhile, Alan Dershowitz, Epstein’s former lawyer, told the New York Post he was certain Maxwell was aiming to make a deal in her discussion with the DoJ.

If that is the case, her decades-long friendship with the president may just be his greatest weapon, especially if she can distance him from any of Epstein’s crimes, or implicate any of his political enemies.

Many Maga-world commentators have noted that Bill Clinton, the former US president, repeatedly flew on the financier’s private jet.

Exactly when the pair met is unclear, but it would have been likely to have been some time in the late 1980s when Maxwell was acting as social emissary for her father Robert Maxwell, the publishing tycoon and fraudster.

“Donald liked Epstein but he was crazy about Maxwell, a very charming lady,” Steven Hoffenberg, a former business associate of Epstein’s, who also knew Mr Trump, told The Washington Post before his death in 2022.

Newspaper accounts place Mr Trump and Maxwell at a party on her father’s yacht, named the Lady Ghislaine after his youngest and favorite daughter, in May 1989.

Guests, drawn from across New York’s social, political and cultural elite, slipped off their footwear before boarding the 180-foot yacht, where they “sipped champagne, nibbled caviar flown in from Paris on Concorde, and salmon served from the vessel’s stores by shoeless waiters”, according to one report.

‘1970s Playboy Baroque’
Mr Trump was captivated by the spectacle, according to John Preston, a Robert Maxwell biographer.

“Removing his shoes with obvious reluctance, he handed them to Robert Maxwell’s valet … before donning his blue bootees,” he wrote.

“Trump then stood gazing at the yacht’s d;cor – described by one visitor as ‘1970s Playboy Baroque.’”

Simon Grigg, Robert Maxwell’s valet, noticed a “peculiar expression” come over the New York businessman’s face. “It was almost like he was in awe but didn’t want to show it,” he recalled.

How Ghislaine Maxwell went from privileged childhood into Jeffrey Epstein's arms - and finally prison


When the publisher was found dead in 1991 after apparently toppling from his yacht into the Atlantic Ocean, the Trump Plaza Hotel hosted a memorial in his honor.

Whether Mr Trump was present is not recorded. But the event was the first time Epstein and Maxwell were pictured together, images that were later widely circulated by prosecutors building a sex trafficking case against the former couple.

Epstein, dressed in evening wear, grins at the then 29-year-old Maxwell, with whom he appears to be in the middle of a conversation as they sit next to each other on red velvet chairs.

After her father’s death, Maxwell was drawn further into New York’s social scene and moved to the city permanently from London.

‘She worshipped rich, domineering men’

In 1992, The Sunday Mirror reported she was living a “champagne high life” off a trust fund set up by her father, and would often attend dinner parties with Ivana Trump, Mr. Trump’s first wife.

She “worshipped rich, domineering men”, according to Tom Bower, another of Robert Maxwell’s chroniclers, and reportedly became more reliant on Epstein.

Ghislaine and Trump were often seen socialising at parties in New York City - pictured here in Oct 1997 - Richard Corkery/Getty

At the same time, she appears to have become further embedded in Mr Trump’s inner circle, regularly appearing at high-society events throughout the 1990s.

“There was substantial interaction between Donald Trump, Ghislaine Maxwell and Ivana Trump,” said Hoffenberg, who was convicted in 1995 of running a $475 million (;350 million) Ponzi scheme through a debt collection agency.

Her first recorded time at Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort was in 1992, when she attended a party thrown by the property tycoon to celebrate life as a single man, accompanied by Epstein.

For a few years, the trail between them goes cold – at least according to media reports. Whether they socialized privately during this time is unknown.

Mr Trump maintained his relationship with Epstein, however, riding on his private jet four times in 1993 then once in 1994 and once in 1995.

In 1997, Maxwell was pictured trying, and apparently failing, to get Mr Trump’s attention as his eye roved over models at an event in New York’s Soho neighbourhood.

The same year, flight logs released via court filings showed Mr Trump flew on Epstein’s plane with the financier and Maxwell to Newark.

Mr Trump attended a dinner organized by Maxwell at Epstein’s mansion in Manhattan in honour of her close friend the Duke of York in 1999, according to The New York Post.

The Republican, who often refers to his mother’s affection for Queen Elizabeth II and speaks warmly about the Royal family, is likely to have appreciated being introduced to the fourth in line to the throne.

Maxwell was reportedly playing the same role she had for her father by helping Prince Andrew navigate New York’s social scene – but the socialite was also opening doors for Mr.Trump.

That meeting may have paved the way for the Duke holidaying at Mar-a-Lago in February 2000 – one of eight vacations that year, the Evening Standard noted at the time. He was “spending more time with [her]… than his own daughters,” it noted.

'Ask Prince Andrew,' Donald Trump said when asked about Epstein's 'cesspool' island in newly unearthed interview

That same month, Mr.Trump was pictured attending a party at the resort with his then-girlfriend, later to be third wife, Melania Knauss, plus Maxwell and Epstein. Andrew was also pictured at the same event.

Virginia Giuffre, an Epstein victim, said she was 17 years old and working as a spa attendant at the Palm Beach club in mid-2000 when she was recruited by Maxwell to work as a masseuse for Epstein, who then started sexually abusing her.

Mr Trump and Maxwell appeared on good terms when they attended the Anand Jon Fashion Show in New York a short time later, sitting side-by-side in the front row and posing for the cameras.

Two years later, they were photographed grinning for the cameras with Melania and supermodel Naomi Campbell at a Dolce & Gabbana event. The friendship seems to have continued into 2003, when Mr Trump reportedly attended another of Epstein and Maxwell’s dinner parties at the paedophile’s New York mansion.

Ghislaine Maxwell, Naomi Campbell, Donald Trump and Melania Knauss at a Dolce & Gabbana opening party in NYC in Nov 2002 - Patrick McMullan/Getty
Ghislaine Maxwell, Naomi Campbell, Donald Trump and Melania Knauss at a Dolce & Gabbana opening party in NYC in Nov 2002 - Patrick McMullan/Getty
According to recent reporting by The Wall Street Journal, it was also in 2003 that Maxwell compiled a leather-bound album for Epstein’s 50th birthday.

Among the letters she allegedly included was a birthday note from Mr. Trump, which imagined a cryptic conversation between the two men in which he told his friend they had “certain things in common”.

“A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret,” it concluded. Mr. Trump has fiercely denied writing or sending the letter, which reportedly featured a drawing of a naked woman in permanent marker with his signature.

It is unclear whether the relationship between Mr. Trump and Maxwell survived the rupture in his friendship with Epstein in 2004, over a Florida real estate deal which eventually saw the financier banned from Mar-a-Lago.

But if he bore a grudge against the woman who had been his friend for more than a decade, he did not show it. As late as 2020, while grappling with the Covid pandemic as US president, Mr. Trump still had warm words for Maxwell.

Asked about her prosecution on sex trafficking, he said: “I just wish her well, frankly. I haven’t really been following it too much. I’ve met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach, and I guess they [Epstein and Maxwell] lived in Palm Beach.”

Speaking to Piers Morgan on Tuesday night, Maxwell’s brother, Ian, praised the president for his 2020 comments.

“I don’t think that anyone else showed the slightest bit of humanity – not anybody at that time. And yet he did,” he told Morgan’s Uncensored show.

“He didn’t need to. He’s president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world. He could have just sloughed it off. He didn’t,” Mr Maxwell added.

Even after Epstein’s apparent suicide in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 and Maxwell’s sex trafficking conviction two years later, their relationship isn’t over.

Maxwell could rescue Mr. Trump from his biggest political crisis since taking office. Some have also suggested the president could seek to reach a quid pro quo with his former friend, floating a pardon or sentence reduction in return for useful information.

Decades after they first met, with one behind bars and the other in the White House, the pair can still be of use to each other.

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