Ghislaine Maxwell’s brother Ian Maxwell says she is innocent as heiress faces US trial

Ghislaine Maxwell‘s brother has today insisted his sister is innocent and that she has been wrongly painted as a ‘monster’ because the anger towards her ex-boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein has now been transferred to her.

Ian Maxwell says he ‘bets’ his sister ‘regrets’ her relationship with the paedophile financier, who was found dead in his prison cell while awaiting a sex trafficking trial.

The socialite and heiress, 59, is now facing her own US trial, accused of abusing and procuring young girls for Epstein.

Maxwell, who for the first time spoke from her New York cell in a world exclusive interview published in the Mail on Sunday, faces a maximum of 80 years in prison if she is found guilty.

But her businessman brother, who like his sister is the child of the late disgraced newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell, today insisted that she is innocent.

He said he also believed the anger towards Epstein had been re-directed to his sister in the wake of the financier’s death.

Speaking to Good Morning Britain’s political editor Ranvir Singh in an exclusive interview today, on the day jury selection is set to begin in his sister’s US trial, he said: ‘I bet she wished she never met Epstein – that’s for sure.

‘I think she must regret that relationship. It’s crucial that that jury is impartial because the weight of media writing and documentaries and podcasts have painted my sister as a monster today. 

‘She’s a cardboard, two, 3D monster and this is not the girl that I know.’

Asked what made him so sure Maxwell was innocent, she said: ‘I know my sister and her core very well, you cannot change the core of who you are so late in your life.’

Mr Maxwell also addressed the allegations made by Virginia Giuffre – now known by her married name of Roberts – who claims Maxwell and Epstein recruited and then trafficked her when she was 17. 

Ms Roberts alleges she was ‘sex trafficked’ to Prince Andrew three times, including once in London – claims the Duke of York strenuously denies.

Ms Roberts is suing the Prince in a separate civil case, which the royal is planning to contest.

While in London a photograph was taken appearing to show Prince Andrew with his hand around a young Ms Roberts while standing next to Maxwell. 

However, Mr Maxwell today appeared to dismiss the photograph, saying it has ‘never been authenticated’.  

‘That photograph’s never been stood up, he told Good Morning Britain.

He said: ‘It’s never been authenticated. All I can say is that no authentication of that photograph has ever occurred. What’s not happening is any kind of allowance for the presumption of innocence.’

Asked about Ms Roberts’ allegations, he said: ‘I think that’s exactly what they are. Allegations.’

Speaking after the interview, Ms Singh told viewers that Mr Maxwell had told her that his sister had been ‘swept up’ in the anger towards Epstein.

She said: ‘I spoke to him [Ian] for about an hour and a half and he got very emotional. He broke down and started crying at one point. 

‘He says Ghislaine has been swept up in two things – one, the Me Too movement, that there is an enormous desire to convict when conviction rates are appallingly low, women just don’t speak about what’s happened to them. 

‘Secondly, as Epstein is dead, all the anger that should have been to him is now on her.’ 

It comes as Maxwell spoke out for the first time about her ‘living hell’ behind bars – claiming that she has been assaulted and abused by prison guards, purposely deprived of sleep and given rotting food to eat.

In a world exclusive, published in the Mail on Sunday, Maxwell, who had her £21 million bail application denied for the fourth time last week, also claims negative media coverage while she has been in custody and the deliberate withholding of evidence have made it ‘impossible’ for her to receive a fair trial.

Speaking from her 10ft by 12ft prison cell inside New York’s notorious Metropolitan Detention Center, where she has spent the past 16 months in solitary confinement, Ms Maxwell said: ‘I have been assaulted and abused for almost a year and a half.

‘I have not had a nutritious meal in all that time. I haven’t slept without lights on – fluorescent lights that have damaged my eyes – or been allowed to sleep without constant interruptions.

‘I am weak, I am frail. I have no stamina. I am tired. I don’t even have shoes which fit properly. They feed me rotten food. One apple had maggots in it. I have not been allowed to exercise.’

Maxwell said in the interview her life had been a living hell ever since more than 20 armed FBI agents swooped on her 156-acre, £800,000 New Hampshire home in July 2020.

She has remained in custody ever since, surviving mostly on a diet of rice and beans with unsalted peanuts for protein and mayonnaise for fat.

Her arrest came 11 months after Epstein, her ex-boyfriend and long-time friend, killed himself in jail while facing child sex charges. Until Epstein’s suicide, Maxwell had never faced criminal charges.

Her lawyers are expected to argue she is being punished by proxy for Epstein’s heinous crimes because, as one source close to the case maintains, ‘someone has to pay for what he did’.

Maxwell has told friends: ‘I fear it will be impossible to get a fair trial. I have tremendous fear that overwhelmingly negative media stories will poison my jury pool and affect the outcome of my trial despite the evidence that will demonstrate everything the jurors thought they knew isn’t true.

‘I look forward to finally having my day in court to prove I played no part in Epstein’s crimes.’

She cannot discuss the specifics of her case on the advice of her powerful legal team. Jury selection begins tomorrow, with the trial starting on November 29. The charges are grave. US authorities have described her as a ‘procurer’ of underage girls for convicted paedophile Epstein.

She also faces multiple felony charges, including ‘transporting a minor for the purposes of criminal sexual activity’ and ‘conspiring to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts’.

Maxwell’s trial will also put Prince Andrew’s relationship with her, and Epstein, back under the spotlight.

The Duke of York’s accuser Virginia Roberts, who claims she was sex-trafficked to Andrew three times (the first when she was 17 and under the legal age of consent), has vowed to attend the trial.

Andrew has vehemently denied Ms Roberts’s claims. His friendship with Ghislaine stretches back decades and he was notoriously photographed with his arm around Ms Roberts’s waist inside Maxwell’s London mews house.

One lawyer associated with the case said: ‘This will thrust Andrew back under the spotlight. It is inconceivable his name won’t be introduced by the women who will testify against Maxwell. He must be dreading it.’

Ghislaine, the Oxford-educated daughter of disgraced newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell, was transferred to the Brooklyn prison in July last year and has been seen by the public only in court sketches since then.

Maxwell also claimed that she has not had adequate time to prepare for the six-week trial. The process of selecting jury members for the trial starts today.

She is facing more than 80 years in jail if convicted on all charges.

Maxwell alleges she was given computers that don’t work, that vital paperwork arrived late and that for a while she did not have a proper desk to work at. 

She says ‘there is no presumption of innocence’ in the detention centre. ‘Pre-trial detainees like me, who by law are innocent until proven guilty, are treated like they are already convicted felons,’ she said. 

‘It’s wrong, it’s unAmerican and unconstitutional. Where are all the people who swore to uphold the Constitution?’

She described her greatest fear is not being able to find an impartial jury. Coverage of the case in the US remains relentless, with her being referred to as ‘Epstein’s madam’ and ‘Epstein’s socialite partner-in-crime’.

She objects: ‘Being tagged a ‘socialite’ feels derogatory and sexist, designed to paint me in a negative light. 

‘I’ve worked my entire life, starting with part-time jobs when I was 15. No man who had a similar professional career would be called a socialite. 

‘I’m overwhelmed by feelings of sadness and shock at the grotesque and untrue narratives that are total fabrication and bear no resemblance to reality.

‘I’m terrified the overwhelmingly negative coverage will poison my jury pool and affect the outcome of my trial, despite the evidence which I feel confident will prove my innocence. 

‘I look forward to having my day in court to prove I played no part in Epstein’s crimes. I am innocent.’ 

Lookalikes put world off scent: Ghislaine Maxwell was the most hunted woman on the planet and hiding out in US… so her team hired DOUBLES of herself and brother Kevin to take a stroll through Paris – then tipped off photographers

Stepping furtively through the streets of Paris, her face mysteriously shrouded, the figure in the heavy shawl was bound to attract attention – and so it proved.

For this was just months after the suicide of paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. And the woman who seemed so anxious to avoid attention bore a remarkable resemblance to Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell – now the most hunted woman on the planet. Had she fled from America to France?

From the moment Epstein was found dead in his New York cell in August 2019, the focus of attention turned to longtime associate Ghislaine, even though she had never been charged with any crime. Victims of Epstein accused her of being a ‘madam’ – claims she vehemently denies and will vigorously contest in court when her trial begins later this month.

Today, for the first time, we can reveal the lengths that Ghislaine went to in order to keep a low profile – which included the extraordinary tactic of hiring ‘lookalikes’ to stroll through Paris to dupe the world’s media.

In an exclusive interview, British security expert Matt Hellyer, a decorated former Paratrooper who headed the crack security team staffed with ex-SAS members that guarded the heiress for a year, said: ‘We went to an agency in France. A security collaborating agency. They found us two people who resembled Ghislaine and her brother Kevin.

‘They strolled in Paris for a couple of days and we leaked it to a newspaper. That is how we distracted the attention away from where Ghislaine really was. She was in the US at all times.

‘Ghislaine was not running from the authorities, she was running from the media.

‘And, you know, many people don’t believe Epstein killed himself. So we were also hired to protect her from a potential killer.’

The astonishing details of Ghislaine Maxwell’s year-long cat and mouse ‘game’ can be revealed for the first time today.

She insists that, far from ‘being on the run’ as many have accused her of being, she was, in fact, available at all times to the American authorities had they wished to question her.

Instead, she says, the FBI staged a dramatic early-morning raid on her final hideaway – an £800,000 estate in New Hampshire – to gain maximum publicity and paint her in the worst light possible.

Mr Hellyer, a friend of Ghislaine’s brother Kevin, was hired within hours of Epstein’s death.

At the time, Ghislaine was living in a secluded £3 million ocean-front property in Manchester-by-Sea, Massachusets, with her husband Scott Borgerson, the couple’s dogs and Scott’s two children.

In his first interview for a new documentary Ghislaine, which will air in the UK and US after her November 29 trial ends, Mr Hellyer said: ‘Our assignment was to get her out of her home within 12 hours of Epstein’s death. She was worried about Scott’s kids. 

‘She didn’t want the cameras around them or anything to happen that could affect their lives. I told her we could fly her out of the country immediately. She refused.’

Ghislaine, who was turned down for bail for the fourth time this week, claims she never planned to flee the US. After all, why would she? 

She insists she is innocent of all charges against her of procuring young women for Epstein and of engaging in sexual assaults against them herself. Her youngest alleged victim was just 14.

Despite having UK, French and US passports, Ghislaine chose to remain in the States, a fact that she and her supporters insist shows she has nothing to hide.

But she was constantly on the move, from one ‘safe house’ to another, as she tried to outrun the media.

Mr Hellyer recalled: ‘Scott felt he could protect her but we convinced him she had to go. From then on, it was, “Where in the world is Ghislaine?” Everyone was speculating.

‘We did not hide her from the authorities. They knew that at any point if they wanted to talk to Ghislaine we would bring her safely to them.’

Indeed, Ghislaine’s legal team claim they reached out to the FBI – but never heard back.

Some media outlets offered readers lucrative ‘bounties’ for the first pictures of the elusive heiress.

At one stage, Ghislaine was photographed outside an In-N-Out burger joint in Los Angeles. Bizarrely, she was reading The Book of Honour: The Secret Lives and Deaths of CIA Operatives.

According to reports at the time, a stunned fellow diner asked: ‘Are you who I think you are?’ to which she replied: ‘Yes, I am.’

The photograph was pored over, with some claiming it was a fake because a poster on a bus stop behind her had long been removed by the time the image was released, according to the ad agency who controlled the bus stop hoarding.

Yet Ghislaine really was in Los Angeles – staying at the home of an old friend. So was it a stunt?

Mr Hellyer says not, adding: ‘We had to move her immediately after that photo came out.’

Ghislaine remained on the move, even as speculation about her whereabouts reached fever pitch.

Everyone, it seemed, had a theory, each one wilder than the last. The New York Post speculated she was in Israel or even on a submarine (she is a qualified submersible pilot). There were rumours she was with Epstein’s friend, former model agent Jean-Luc Brunel, in Brazil.

Was she a secret agent for Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency linked to her late father, disgraced newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell? Was it true she had been seen being spirited away in the dead of night by Israeli agents?

There were theories that she was holed up in a private villa in the South of France, had been ‘hidden’ by South African supporters deep in the bush, and even that she was in an underground bunker owned by rich and powerful friends who were terrified of the secrets she might ‘spill’ if she chose to tell all.

There were sightings in New Zealand, the Caribbean, London… and, yes, Paris.

The Sun newspaper reported that she had been seen there, claiming to have identified her from a distinctive signet ring.

‘She rarely went out, but when she did, she wore a large patterned blanket which she pulled tightly around her face and draped across her shoulders,’ it said.

‘She clearly didn’t want to be recognised and was able to blend in.’

The ruse was a good one. Epstein owned an apartment there on the Avenue Foch, close to the Arc de Triomphe. It is now on the market for £10 million. Ghislaine’s mother is French and Ghislaine was born in France and has French citizenship.

‘Everyone loved the Paris sighting,’ said a source close to the case. ‘Sometimes it’s a matter of giving the people what they want. The sighting kept everyone happy for a while and sent the dogs barking down the wrong trail. She never left America.’

In reality, Ghislaine would move from safe house to safe house, always under cover of darkness.

She regularly changed her phone to avoid being tracked and spoke only to her closest family.

Everything she needed was bought with cash. But by early last year, she was tired of being, in effect, ‘homeless’.

Mr Hellyer said: ‘She missed her family. She was getting tired. She needed a home.’

Ghislaine told her security team: ‘Enough running!’ A refuge was found in the sleepy town of Bradford, New Hampshire, an hour’s drive away from the home she shared with her husband and stepchildren.

Isolated in 156 acres of rural woodland, it was the perfect spot for her to relax and stop running.

Mr Hellyer said: ‘She and Scott and the kids reunited at weekend. We brought the family to her home, her animals. They were able to be a real, loving family.’

But in the early hours of July 2, 2020, all that changed.

Ghislaine and her guards heard a small plane flying directly over the property at around 5am.

Mr Hellyer recalled: ‘I immediately knew it was the authorities. We were in the pandemic lockdown. What small plane could it be unless it was the authorities?’

He insists Ghislaine was trained to go to a ‘safe room’ and did not try to flee as FBI agents broke through the door, as authorities claimed in a press conference later that day.

FBI assistant director William Sweeney told assembled reporters: ‘She is one of the villains… who slithered away to a gorgeous property where she was continuing to live a life of privilege while her victims live with the trauma inflicted upon them years ago.’

But Mr Hellyer claimed: ‘She did exactly what she was told by us. She did not run from the authorities like some have claimed.

‘The moment we identified it was the authorities, she cooperated.

‘She was not handcuffed.

‘She asked to say goodbye to her beloved animals.’

Ghislaine’s brother Ian added: ‘The authorities knew at all times where my sister was, so to have this “big show”, the aeroplanes, the press conference. They had an agenda. Clearly.’

It is a charge the FBI denies. In court filings agents claimed they tracked her via her mobile, which she opened in the name of ‘G Max’ and used to call her sister Isabel.

Regardless, Ghislaine has spent every night since then behind bars. Within weeks, a jury will decide if she will walk free – or remain locked up for ever.