SUNDAY, AUGUST 2 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A21
BY ROSALIND S. HELDERMAN
AND MARC FISHERThey were two larger-than-life
wealthy businessmen — one try-
ing to break into the New York
scene, the other a symbol of the
city’s brash excess.
So it was natural that when
British media mogul Robert Max-
well threw a party in New York on
the deck of his luxury yacht the
Lady Ghislaine — named for his
youngest daughter — he would
invite Donald Trump, the city’s
tabloid-friendly developer.
As guests mingled and drank
during the 1989 bash, Maxwell
greeted Trump privately in the
wheelhouse and gave him a tour
of the craft, recalled David Adler,
who was then the head of public
relations at Maxwell’s publishing
house.
Among the other high-pow-
ered guests at the party, accord-
ing to media reports at the time,
was the yacht’s namesake, then-
27-year-old Ghislaine Maxwell,
visiting from England. After her
father’s death two years later, she
would move to New York and link
up with another wealthy finan-
cier, Jeffrey Epstein.
For at least 15 years after the
yacht party, Ghislaine Maxwell
and Trump continued to mingle
in the same gilded circles, attend-
ing the same parties in Florida
and New York, sharing meals and
flying together at least once on
Epstein’s private plane, according
to documents, interviews and
media accounts. They were cap-
tured together in photographs
and videos several times in that
period, and Maxwell got to know
two of Trump’s wives.
Trump cited their past interac-
tions after Maxwell was charged
in July with the sex trafficking of
minors, accused by prosecutors
in Manhattan of helping to re-
cruit, groom and abuse underage
girls with Epstein. She has plead-
ed not guilty.
When asked July 21 i f he
thought Maxwell would give
prosecutors information about
powerful men who may have
been involved in the exploitation
of minors, the president simply
said, “I wish her well, frankly.” He
said he had met Maxwell “numer-
ous times over the years,” noting
that they both have lived in Palm
Beach.
He added again: “I wish her
well, whatever it is.”
Trump’s kind words toward
Maxwell are a reminder of his
long-standing tendency to extend
sympathy to friends or social
peers who have been accused of
serious wrongdoing — a sharp
contrast to the rhetoric he often
deploys against political enemies
he accuses of “treason” and “cor-
ruption.”
When Roger Ailes was ousted
as the chairman of Fox News i n
2016 amid allegations of sexual
harassment from more than 20
women, Trump said he felt “very
badly.”
“It’s very sad because he’s a
very good person,” Trump said.
He likewise called former Fox
News anchor Bill O’Reilly a “good
person” after the New York Times
reported that the network had
paid $13 million to five women
who had accused him of harass-
ment, noting that O’Reilly is “a
person I know well.”
When Robert Kraft, a Trump
friend who owns the New Eng-
land Patriots football team, was
accused of soliciting prostitution
at a Florida massage parlor,
Trump called the charges “very
sad,” noting that Kraft had “pro-
claimed his innocence totally.”
(Kraft has pleaded not guilty and
the case is not yet resolved.)
White House press secretary
Kayleigh McEnany told Fox News
that Trump’s comments about
Maxwell were prompted by Ep-
stein’s suicide in a Manhattan
federal detention center last year
after he was arrested on federal
sex trafficking charges for the
alleged abuse of underage girls in
New York and Florida.
“What the president was not-
ing is that the last person who
was charged in this case ended up
dead in a jail cell,” she said. “And
the president wants justice to be
served for the victims in this case,
and he prefers for this to play out
in a courtroom.”
The White House declined to
comment.
Maxwell has been charged
with perjury and conspiring to
entice minors to travel to engage
in sex acts. Prosecutors allege
that she recruited girls to perform
sex acts for Epstein in the 1990s.
Her attorneys, who did not
respond to requests for comment,
said they plan to contest the
charges vigorously.
During those years, Trump so-
cialized with Epstein, particular-
ly after Epstein purchased a man-
sion in Palm Beach, Fla., in 1990,
not far from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago
estate.
Trump told New York maga-
zine in 2002 that Epstein was “a
lot of fun to be with” and “a
terrific guy.”
“It is even said that he likes
beautiful women as much as I do,
and many of them are on the
younger side,” he said at the time.
A fter Epstein’s arrest last year,
Trump said he had known Ep-
stein “like everybody in Palm
Beach knew him,” calling him a
“fixture in Palm Beach.”
He added that the two had had
a falling out and that he was “not
a fan” of Epstein, who had previ-
ously been convicted of a prosti-
tution charge in 2008.
Trump has not made a similar
effort to distance himself from
Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime com-
panion.
“Donald liked Epstein, but he
was crazy about Maxwell, a very
charming lady,” Steven Hoffen-
berg, a Trump acquaintance who
was a onetime business partner
of Epstein, told The Washington
Post last year.
Trump appeared fond of Rob-
ert Maxwell, said Adler, who
watched the two men interact at
the 1989 party.
“It was very jovial,” he said.
“They were both hustling. They
were both trying to get business
from each other.”
At one point, Adler pitched
Trump on a proposal for Robert
Maxwell to publish a Trump-
branded magazine. He said that
Trump was intrigued by the idea,
but that nothing came of the
proposal.
Robert Maxwell was later ac-
cused of pilfering from his com-
pany’s pension fund. He wasfound dead in the Atlantic Ocean
near his yacht in 1991, presumed
to have fallen from the vessel
during the night and drowned.
According to Hoffenberg, it
was Robert Maxwell who first
introduced his daughter to Ep-
stein in the late 1980s.
During the 1990s, Ghislaine
Maxwell and Epstein were ro-
mantically involved, according to
court documents. She also was
responsible for managing Ep-
stein’s various households — in-
cluding his Florida home near
Trump’s estate. Epstein’s lawyers
have told a Florida court that
their romantic relationship end-
ed amicably in 2000 but they
remained friends.
Hoffenberg said in an inter-
view this month that in the early
1990s, Ghislaine Maxwell became
friendly with Trump’s first wife,
Ivana, who retained her social
cachet after her divorce from
Trump in 1992. The Sunday Times
of London reported that year that
Maxwell and Ivana Trump were
part of “a circle” that socialized
together.
“There was substantial inter-
action between Donald Trump,
Ghislaine Maxwell and Ivana
Trump,” said Hoffenberg, who
was convicted in 1995 of running
a massive Ponzi scheme.
Ivana Trump did not respond
to a request for comment. Awoman who answered her phone
and identified herself as her assis-
tant said that Ivana Trump was
not close friends with Ghislaine
Maxwell but that the two did
socialize, particularly in London,
where Ivana Trump owned a
home at one point.
“They would meet at cocktail
parties, gallery openings, shows
— that kind of thing,” the assis-
tant said before hanging up.
The assistant said Ivana Trump
had not seen Maxwell in at least a
decade.
After Trump’s divorce from Iva-
na, he continued to socialize with
Maxwell, particularly alongside
Epstein, according to media cov-
erage at the time.
In 1992, the couple attended a
party at Mar-a-Lago that Trump
threw for National Football
League cheerleaders, intended
partly to celebrate being single
after divorcing Ivana and break-
ing up with Marla Maples, an
actress with whom Trump had an
on-again, off-again relationship
before later marrying.
Video footage from the party
released by NBC last year shows
Trump and Epstein chatting easi-
ly, as Trump appears to point out
women on the dance floor. At one
point, Trump can be seen whis-
pering in Epstein’s ear, causing
him to double over in laughter.
And in the background, visiblebriefly, is Maxwell, entering be-
hind Epstein in a flowy white
pantsuit, chatting with former
NBA player and then-Congress-
man Tom McMillen (D-Md.).
McMillen told The Post via
email this month that he had seen
Maxwell in the video but had no
memory of her at the party.
Five years after the NFL cheer-
leader party, Trump flew from
Palm Beach to Newark on Ep-
stein’s private plane with Epstein
and Maxwell, according to 1997
flight logs included in court fil-
ings.
The New York Post reported in
1999 that Trump attended a Max-
well-organized dinner at Ep-
stein’s New York mansion in hon-
or of Britain’s Prince Andrew, a
close friend of Maxwell.
The following year, Prince An-
drew attended a celebrity tennis
tournament at Mar-a-Lago as a
guest of Maxwell and Epstein. A
photo from the event shows Max-
well and Epstein posing with
Trump and Melania Knauss, a
model whom Trump would later
marry, arms around one another.
Published photographs also
show that Trump sat next to
Maxwell in the front row at a
2000 fashion show and that he
socialized with her again at an-
other show in 2002. In 2003, New
York magazine reported that
Trump again attended a smalldinner party organized by Max-
well at Epstein’s mansion on
Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
“The dialogues are so engaging
that serving even the most ex-
traordinary food sometimes
seems inappropriate,” Epstein
told the magazine then.
Federal prosecutors have said
that during the 1990s, Epstein
and Maxwell were luring teenage
girls to Epstein’s homes, where he
would allegedly sexually assault
them.
Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private
club, played a key role in allega-
tions against Epstein and Max-
well. In the summer of 2000,
Virginia Giuffre, 16, one of Ep-
stein’s alleged victims, was em-
ployed as a locker room attendant
in the club’s spa and fitness area,
according to her account and
court records.
In a 2016 deposition unsealed
by the court Thursday, Giuffre
explained that she had only been
working at the club for a few
weeks when she was approached
by Maxwell as she manned a desk
just outside the spa. Maxwell, she
said, appeared to have been visit-
ing the club either for a massage
or to use the fitness facilities.
She testified that Maxwell no-
ticed she was reading a book
about massage therapy. Maxwell
told the teenager she had a friend
— Epstein — who could pay Giuf-
fre to be a traveling masseuse and
invited her to meet him at his
Palm Beach mansion.
Giuffre testified that she re-
sponded that she had no accredi-
tation or training to serve as a
massage therapist. Maxwell in-
sisted it was not a problem. “ ‘We
can train you. We can get you
educated,’ ” Giuffre testified that
Maxwell told her. “ ‘If the guy
likes you, then, you know, it will
work out for you. You’ll travel.
You’ll make good money.’ ”
In a recent documentary about
Epstein that aired on Netflix,
Giuffre explained that Maxwell
was appealing: “She was beauti-
ful. She looked educated. She was
nice,” Giuffre said.
But in the newly unsealed de-
position, Giuffre alleged that
Maxwell sexually abused her both
alone and jointly with Epstein.
Maxwell denied Giuffre’s allega-
tions in a 2016 deposition, calling
her “an absolute liar.”
Giuffre has said that Epstein
sexually abused her repeatedly at
his homes in Palm Beach and
New York, a claim he denied. A
lawsuit Giuffre filed against Max-
well was settled in 2017.
After Epstein’s arrest, a lawyer
for Trump said Epstein was never
a member of Mar-a-Lago. But he
and Maxwell appear to have at-
tended social events and parties
there as guests.
The lawyer said the president
barred Epstein from Mar-a-Lago
around the time it became public
in 2007 that Epstein was being
investigated in Florida for sexual
contact with minors. That year,
the New York Post reported he
had been barred from the proper-
ty. At the time, Epstein denied the
report, countering that he had
only recently been invited to an
event there.
Trump said last year that his
friendship with Epstein had
cooled after the two had a falling
out. He said their fight took place
about 15 years earlier, which
would place the rupture in 2004
— before the investigation in
Florida began.
The president declined to ex-
plain the reason their relation-
ship ended, telling reporters that
it didn’t “make any difference.”
Around that time, as The
Washington Post previously re-
ported, Epstein and Trump went
head-to-head in a bankruptcy
auction for ownership of a six-
acre oceanfront estate in Palm
Beach.
The trustee for the auction told
The Post that each man had bad-
mouthed the other in advance of
the public sale. Ultimately, Trump
was victorious, beating out Ep-
stein and winning the right to
purchase the mansion for
$41.4 million. He sold it four
years later to a Russian business-
man for $95 million, more than
doubling his investment.
As for Maxwell, it is not clear
whether she and Trump contin-
ued to interact after Trump’s
friendship with Epstein ended.
In recent years, she founded an
ocean-related charity and spent
time fending off civil litigation
related to claims against Epstein.
In a court filing last m onth,
lawyers for Maxwell wrote that at
the time of Epstein’s arrest, Max-
well had not been in contact with
him for more than a decade.
But court documents released
Thursday show that the two
emailed as recently as January
2015, when Epstein advised Max-
well that he believed she had
done nothing wrong and should
act like it.
“Go outside, head high, not as
an escaping convict,” he wrote
her. “Go to parties. deal with it.”[email protected]
[email protected]Alice Crites and Fr ances Stead
Sellers contributed to this report.Before he wished her well, they had
long run in the same gilded circles
Ghislaine Maxwell, charged with sex trafficking of minors with longtime companion
Jeffrey Epstein, mingled for years with the future president and got to know two of his wivesARNALDO MAGNANI/GETTY IMAGES
Donald Trump with Ghislaine Maxwell in New York on Oct. 29, 1997. The two socialized for at least 15 years, into the early 2000s.JACQUES SOFFER/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE VIA GETTY IMAGESLUCAS JACKSON/REUTERS
CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE LEFT: From left, Trump, media mogul Robert Maxwell, cable news executive Steve Ross and CBS
reporter Mike Wallace meet in the wheelhouse of Maxwell’s yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, during a party in New York in the spring of- The Lady Ghislaine at a port in Monaco in July 1992. Audrey Strauss, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New
York, announces charges against Ghislaine Maxwell on July 2 in New York alleging she was involved i n the sexual exploitation and
abuse of multiple minor girls by Jeffrey Epstein. Trump, then-girlfriend Melania Knauss (now first lady Melania Trump), Epstein
and Ghislaine Maxwell at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., on Feb. 12, 2000.
COURTESY OF DAVID ADLERDAVIDOFF STUDIOS PHOTOGRAPHY/GETTY IMAGES