the times | Saturday January 1 2022 35
Saturday interviewNews
marble and finding the shape inside it.
In the 1990s the deposition he took
from Bill Gates was so damning that a
court ordered the break-up of
Microsoft (a decision later reversed).
A decade earlier his cross-
examination of General William
Westmoreland at a libel trial made a
revered war hero look like a liar. Now
it was Maxwell’s turn.
Boies got her to acknowledge
having “three-way sexual activities”with Epstein and two other women,
but she claimed that “she was not
aware of Epstein having sex with
anyone other than her”, he says. “She
testified that she didn’t know that
there were sex toys in [Epstein’s PalmThe derringer is a gift from a client, a possible reference to his reputation as a gun for hire. Below left, Virginia Giuffre
Beach mansion]. Everybody said there
were sex toys all over the house and
she was responsible for the entire
house.” (At her trial Juan Alessi, the
former house manager, recalled
occasionally finding a large sex toy on
Epstein’s massage table which he
would wash and place “in Ms
Maxwell’s closet in a basket”). “She
testified that she never gave anybody
a massage. We had testimony from
people that she did give people
massages.”I
t’s startling to read it now, given
the photographs released at her
trial, of Maxwell massaging
Epstein’s feet against her breasts.
“What was critical was that we
proved that she was flat out lying in
her deposition, committing perjury,”
Boies says. This was “very convincing
in showing prosecutors they had a
very strong case to go forward with”.
When Maxwell was arrested in
2020, she was charged with two
offences of perjury and Boies’s
exchanges with her were quoted in
the indictment. Giuffre’s suit also
provided witness testimony, flight
manifests and a wealth of
documentary evidence on which they
could build a case.
Now, of course, Giuffre is going
after Prince Andrew. On Tuesday
Andrew’s lawyers will try to get the
case dismissed on technical grounds.
Some legal observers think that if this
fails, the prince will stop engaging
with the case and refuse to submit to
a deposition. Boies’s advice for him is
similar to the advice he tried to offer
Maxwell five years ago. “I think thatshe was brought down by arrogance’
he has had a peculiar approach to
dealing with these allegations,
including that disastrous BBC
interview that he did where, you
know, he was given all sorts of softball
questions.
“He could have accepted some
responsibility, put his spin on it, said:
‘I never thought she was under age. I
so regret it.’ But he showed no
remorse, no regret for the victims,
and his trying to avoid [being served
with Giuffre’s suit] by running from
castle to castle – these steps only
make him look guilty.”
Before the trial, a source close to
Andrew’s legal team made much of
the fact that Giuffre was not being
called as a witness. Boies thinks
prosecutors feared her testimony
about Andrew and others might have
been distracting. But “she was very
prominent”, he says. “The jury clearly
believe that she had been trafficked.”
He now hopes for more
prosecutions, of “collaborators who
helped Epstein and Maxwell in the
sex trafficking itself... and the
participants, the ‘Johns’, in colloquial
language.” Though it would be more
complicated to pursue those men,
“the people who participated flew on
the planes with the girls and can be
charged, I think, not only with
transporting but with enticement”.
He won’t say who he means,
though the duke was a passenger on
Epstein’s jets.
As for Maxwell, he thinks that “if
she has any sense she will try to
acknowledge responsibility and
co-operate”. I wonder aloud why she
didn’t flee the country years ago. “I
think it was a combination of
arrogance and she had gotten away
with it for so long... You begin to
think you are above the law,” Boies
says. “This was a terribly long wake-
up call. She should have woken up
when we first served her with a
complaint. If she didn’t wake up then,
she should have woken up when I
took her deposition.”
Maxwell sat at the end of a table.
Boies sat to her left, with his back to
the window. She claimed to hardly
remember Giuffre, but she would
remember Boies. “I consider this a
real interaction,” she said. “I will not
be forgetting this any time soon.”
Maxwell’s traumatic upbringing is no
defence, Sarah Ditum, page 25NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX/EYEVINE
David BoiesCurriculum vitae
Born March 11, 1941 in Ilinois
Education Degree from Yale Law
School
Career After graduating he worked
for the New York firm Cravath,
Swaine & Moore. He later set up his
own company, Boies Schiller
Flexner. His clients have included
Al Gore and Harvey Weinstein, the
disgraced film producer
Family Married to Mary Schuman