Ghislaine Maxwell breaks silence with claim about Jeffrey Epstein’s death

Ghislaine Maxwell has spoken out for the first time about Jeffrey Epstein’s death, telling officials she does not believe he took his own life.

On 22 August, the US Department of Justice released more than 300 pages of transcripts and audio from her conversations with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. The meetings, which took place over two days in late July, focused on crimes linked to Epstein and what Maxwell thinks really happened to him. Epstein, who was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, was found dead in 2019 inside his New York jail cell. His death was ruled a suicide.

But Maxwell, 63, who is serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking, told Blanche that she thinks his death may have been the result of an “internal situation” behind bars.

“In prison, where I am, they will kill you, or they will pay — somebody can pay a prisoner to kill you for $25 worth of commissary,” she said. “That’s about the going rate for a hit with a lock today.”

When pressed on whether someone outside the prison might have wanted Epstein dead, Maxwell admitted it was possible but said she did not believe it. “I don’t think Epstein had a hit on like that,” she said. “If it is indeed murder, I believe it was an internal situation.”

She went on to dismiss theories that Epstein was silenced to protect powerful friends. “I do not have any reason to believe that,” she said. “And I also think it’s ludicrous, because if that is what they wanted, they would’ve had plenty of opportunity when he wasn’t in jail.”

The timing of the transcript release coincides with Maxwell’s push for a pardon from Donald Trump. In her interviews, she insisted she had only ever seen Trump and Epstein together at social events and had “never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way.”

Her lawyer, David Markus, has said Maxwell “did not hold back” in her talks with Blanche about Epstein, who had pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking charges before his death. Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime associate, was convicted in 2021 and is now serving her sentence at Federal Correctional Institution Tallahassee in Florida.

The revelations come amid ongoing controversy around Epstein’s death. Earlier this year, Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed that Epstein’s client list was “sitting on my desk” ready to be made public, only for the DOJ to later insist no such list existed and there wasn’t enough evidence to charge anyone else.

Trump, who knew Epstein for years before distancing himself in the mid-2000s, has also faced renewed questions about his ties to the disgraced financier. He has publicly urged his supporters to move on, calling the constant focus on Epstein “unbelievable.” His name resurfaced after Elon Musk claimed Trump was “in the Epstein files.”

Epstein had previously pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting a minor for prostitution and served just over a year in jail in a plea deal widely criticised as too lenient. Arrested again in 2019, he died a month later in custody. While the official ruling was suicide, the unusual circumstances around his death continue to fuel suspicion.

His brother Mark Epstein has long questioned the story, telling NBC News: “More and more, I believe he was murdered. And everyone who looks at all the information that’s out there on facts comes to the same conclusion.”