Ghislaine Maxwell has repeated her claim that a photograph showing Prince Andrew with Virginia Giuffre is “fake”.
In an interview with the US Department of Justice, conducted last month, Maxwell said: “I believe it’s literally a fake photo.”
The imprisoned former girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein also dismissed as “rubbish” Giuffre’s claims that she was paid to have a relationship with Prince Andrew and that he had sex with her at Maxwell’s London home.
The disgraced socialite claimed one of the motives behind the story was to attack the Royal Family.
Maxwell was interviewed by the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, over two days in Tallahassee, Florida – just a week before being moved to a minimum-security prison camp in Bryan, Texas.
While the name at the centre of the discussion on Prince Andrew had been redacted, it is circumstantially highly likely to be Giuffre, given the conversation, as well as the timelines and mention of an infamous photograph.
It is not the first time she has questioned the photograph. During a 2023 interview with TalkTV, after having been sentenced to 20 years in a Florida prison, she said: “It’s a fake. I don’t believe it’s real for a second, in fact I’m sure it’s not.
“Well, there’s never been an original and further, there’s no photograph, and I’ve only ever seen a photocopy of it.”
The photograph, said to have been taken at Maxwell’s London home in 2001, shows the Duke of York with his arm around Giuffre, who was then 17. Maxwell can be seen smiling in the background. The picture has been central to allegations made against Andrew, which he has strongly denied.
Questions over the photograph’s authenticity have surfaced repeatedly. Prior to her death last year, Giuffre had insisted it was genuine and said she gave the original to the FBI.
Photographic experts have told various media outlets that there is no clear evidence that it has been doctored.
Earlier in the transcript from July’s interview, Maxwell also denied that Andrew could have had sex with Ms Giuffre because her London house was too small.
“The idea of him doing anything of that nature in my house, that’s the size of this room, is so mind-blowingly not conceivable to me,” she said.
The remarks are the latest in a series of denials Maxwell has issued since being convicted in 2021 of trafficking underage girls for Epstein, the financier and sex offender who died in a New York jail in 2019.
Prince Andrew has always denied any wrongdoing. In 2022, he reached a financial settlement with Giuffre in a US civil case without admitting liability.
His legal team at the time said he was making the settlement in order to avoid prolonging the case and to allow him to dedicate himself to public service.
In the interview, Maxwell also described the first time that Epstein and Andrew became acquainted, claiming that she had never thought about introducing them as they were like “chalk and cheese”.
She said the pair met in the early 2000s “either in Nantucket or the Vineyard”, at an event separate to Maxwell, and that they quickly became close, making her feel “left out”.
Maxwell also claimed that it was Sarah Ferguson who had introduced Epstein and Andrew, after she met with the financier in the Bahamas. She described accusations that she was the one to introduce them as a “flat untruth”.
