The Ghislaine Maxwell I know

My wife and I were introduced to Ghislaine Maxwell by Sir Evelyn and Lady Lynne de Rothschild, and we subsequently met her on several occasions — generally in the presence of prominent people such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, Nobel Prize-winning scientists, presidents of universities, and prominent academic and business people. We never saw her do anything inappropriate. We knew her only as Jeffrey Epstein’s thirty-something girlfriend.

Now she stands accused of serious crimes allegedly committed a quarter of a century ago. Like every other arrested person, she must be presumed innocent. Many in the public however, will presume her guilty because of the portrayal of her in the Netflix series about Jeffrey Epstein. But no one should believe anything they saw in that series, because it was based largely on the accounts of two women with histories of making dubious accusations.

Let’s begin with Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who has alleged she was trafficked to Prince Andrew by Epstein and Maxwell, for which she claims she was paid $15,000. But she also has said — as I argue in a civil action against her — that she met Al and Tipper Gore on Epstein’s island (for this and other revelations she was paid $160,000). She describes the incident in great detail, but the truth is that neither of the Gores have ever met Epstein and were certainly never on his island. She has also made accusations against former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, former majority leader of the US Senate George Mitchell, former US Representative to the UN Bill Richardson, owner of L Brands Limited Leslie Wexner, and many others who have categorically denied these accusations. Her own lawyer has acknowledged that an 11-year investigation disproved the accusations against these prominent people.

Finally, she claimed to have sex with me on six or seven occasions, although she had previously admitted in her own words that she never met me or even heard of me. Her own lawyer has admitted that she was ‘wrong…simply wrong’ in accusing me, since my travel records prove that I could never have been in the places she claimed to have met me. She admitted to her best friend that she was pressured to falsely accuse me by her lawyers who were trying to secure a billion-dollar settlement from Leslie Wexner.

I presented all this documentation to Netflix and they promised to show it to their viewing audience, but they broke their promise and withheld it.

Another Netflix witness is a woman named, Sarah Ransome. But Netflix failed to disclose that in the run-up to the 2016 election Ransome wrote dozens of emails to the New York Post claiming to have sex tapes of the two ‘pedophiles’ who were running for president, namely Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, as well as sex tapes of Richard Branson and others. She also claimed that Hillary Clinton ordered the CIA to kill her and to destroy her tapes. The Post of course did not run that story. She subsequently admitted she had ‘invented’ that story; there were no sex tapes.

Netflix also had all this information and promised to show it, but again they refused because they did not want their viewers to see anything that challenged the credibility of the lying witnesses who were central to their one-sided narrative.

So everyone should keep an open mind about Maxwell as they should about others who have been accused by Epstein’s alleged victims. The truth-testing mechanisms of cross-examination and confrontation must be employed against these witnesses, as they are against other accusers. Only after a full trial, in which both sides are presented should reasonable people come to conclusions about Ghislaine Maxwell.

In addition to presenting factual defenses, Maxwell’s lawyers may argue that the Statute of Limitations have expired on these 20-plus year allegations. They may also argue that Maxwell is protected by Epstein’s original plea deal that expressly included Maxwell as someone who received immunity. So stay tuned. The case against Ghislaine Maxwell is far from over.

This article first appeared on Spectator USA.