Jeffrey Epstein may have been set up on a date with Princess Diana in London, according to explosive testimony by Ghislaine Maxwell.
In tapes released on Friday by the Department of Justice, Maxwell, 63, said she believes Epstein went to London to meet with Diana.
Maxwell also claimed in the interview that Prince Andrew’s former wife, Sarah Ferguson, was “putting the moves” on Epstein soon after he met the British royals.
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Talking about Epstein’s alleged courtship of Diana, Maxwell said the financier went to a “big event” in the U.K. without her. “I don’t know if he sat with Diana or he met with Diana and he’d already met her. I don’t know, but this, I believe was organized by Rosa,” she added.
Maxwell continued: “I don’t know if she was being set up as a date for him, maybe because she was… I don’t want to speak bad of Diana, but… I’m not going to do that.”
Maxwell said that before she met Epstein, he lived in London for a while in the 1980s, and he knew some “high society people,” including Princess Diana’s best friend. “Her name was Rosa Monckton. And Rosa’s husband, Dominic Lawson, who’s a famous journalist,” she said.
Maxwell was speaking to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche during a two-day interview last month. She agreed to discuss her relationship with Epstein despite refusing to testify at her trial. The former socialite and Epstein accomplice is currently serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking.
Maxwell was unclear about the timing of the alleged date, suggesting it may have been around the early 2000s, which would have been impossible, as Diana died in 1997.
Maxwell didn’t discuss Diana any further, but she went on to talk about her friendship with Prince Andrew, who has faced allegations that he had a relationship with an underage girl at her home in London.
“I did not introduce him to Prince Andrew or to Sarah Ferguson,” said Maxwell of Epstein. “That is a flat untruth.”
She told Blanche: “If you find me that photograph [of Princess Diana in London], I can date that time when he met Princess Diana at that event… and based on that, I can tell you whether it’s pre- or post- that event.”
She added that Andrew was invited to Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard and met Epstein there.
“However, I believe that before that event, he had gone to the Bahamas and had hung out with Sarah Ferguson. And Sarah had called Epstein… or I don’t know. I’m speculating. Anyway, long and short, he met Andrew up there.”
Maxwell said it would never have occurred to her to introduce Epstein to the prince, adding that they were like “chalk and cheese.”
“I think Sarah is the one that pushed that,” she told Blanche. “And they met and hung out, I want to say two or three times that had nothing to do with me. I wasn’t communicating with Andrew. I wasn’t in touch with him.
“And I say that because I was annoyed and I felt left out. I felt disrespected and I was, like, this is weird. I couldn’t even imagine Epstein and Andrew together.
“And I thought that Sarah was trying to put the moves on Jeffrey, if I’m being honest, and thought the whole thing was annoying and I was p----d off.”
Maxwell explained that later, Epstein told her Andrew was going to New York and that she had to “organize the whole thing.”
“That’s classic by the way, classic Epstein.”
“Anyway, so Andrew came, and of course, the minute we got together I was like, yay. Hi. And then it was so nice… I really liked him a lot and… it was so nice when we became really, really good friends—much more so than when we were in London,” she added.
Maxwell insisted that Andrew did not have sex with his high-profile accuser, the late Virginia Giuffre. “The idea of him doing anything of that nature in my house, that’s the size of this room, is so mind-blowingly inconceivable to me.”
She insisted the famous photo of Andrew with Giuffre was falsified and added: “I believe that the whole thing was manufactured.”
Epstein’s alleged friendship with Princess Diana had never been previously revealed, but author Michael Wolff told the Daily Beast’s Inside Trump’s Head podcast that the convicted pedophile once competed with Trump to see who would be first to sleep with the royal, who died in a car crash in Paris on Aug. 31, 1997.
“They had a competition, Trump and Epstein,” Wolff told Joanna Coles. “Of who would be the one, the first one to sleep with Princess Diana… They just understood: What could you get from these people? Both Trump and Epstein. ‘What can you get from somebody?’ is the question you would always ask about anybody.”
There was no suggestion that either man ever had a physical relationship with Diana.
