Ghislaine Maxwell allegedly took sexually explicit photographs of teenage girls and gave them to Jeffrey Epstein for his birthday, Fox News reports.
The allegation emerged Friday in documents that were unsealed as part of the sex-trafficking case against Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime associate.
The records show that in February 2016, attorneys for one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre, informed federal prosecutors that Maxwell had taken the images of the girl when she was just 16 years old.
Epstein by this time had already pleaded guilty to prostitution under state law in Florida, but he had avoided federal charges under a non-prosecution agreement.
As part of their discussion, lawyers for Giuffre and an assistant U.S. attorney discussed numerous allegations against Maxwell and Epstein. The prosecutor’s notes of the meeting, which occurred in New York, were included in the trove of records released Friday.
Following the discussion, the prosecutor, known publicly only as “AK,” conferred with a more senior attorney about potentially pursuing federal charges in the Southern District of New York.
“One thing that leaned in favor of taking action was that one of the lawyers . . . said that FBI agents in the Florida case were not happy with the result and how the case was resolved,” the prosecutor wrote in the notes, according to Fox News.
“That concerned AK because experienced FBI agents in this area usually, in AK’s experience, make collaborative decisions with the US [Attorney’s Office],” the notes read, Fox News reports.
The prosecutor then called a high-ranking FBI official to ask if he would inquire with agents in Florida to assess whether they felt “justice had not been served.”
But the FBI official never responded, and the prosecutor “took the radio silence to mean that the FBI agents in Florida did not express dissatisfaction,” the documents state, according to Fox News.
Federal authorities subsequently did not open an investigation until after the Miami Herald began publishing articles about the sex abuse allegations. Epstein was later indicted in 2019 for alleged sex trafficking, and he committed suicide in jail that August.
The feds arrested Maxwell less than a year later while she was hiding out in New Hampshire.
Maxwell’s case remains pending. She has pleaded not guilty.
Previously unsealed court records show that Maxwell allegedly kept a photo album containing images of topless girls who had visited Epstein’s Palm Beach estate, WPTV reports.
Maxwell allegedly took the photographs herself while the girls were around the home’s pool.
“I know she went out and took pictures in the pool because later I would see them at the desk or at the house; and nude, 99.9 percent of the time they were topless,” one victim said, according to court records obtained by the television station.
In January, CrimeOnline reported that Maxwell had been accused of directing “a roomful of underage girls to kiss, dance, and touch one another” for Epstein.
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[Feature Photo: Ghislaine Maxwell in 1991/AP Photo, Dominique Mollard, File; Jeffrey Epstein/New York State Sex Offender Registry via AP, File]
