Shortly after the suspicious suicide of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in August, Attorney General William Barr said that any co-conspirators “should not rest easy.” Almost five months later, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is delivering on that warning: According to a Reuters report, the FBI is investigating “people who facilitated” Epstein’s alleged sex-trafficking ring, including Ghislaine Maxwell, the socialite, who, according to multiple civil lawsuits, served as Epstein’s “madam,” recruiting underage girls for sexual abuse.
The two law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation who spoke with Reuters did not identify anyone else that the FBI is investigating except Maxwell, who has not been charged with any criminal activity. They did say that agents leading the probe, which is in its early stages, do not currently have any intention to interview Prince Andrew; Epstein victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre claims that she was forced to have sex with the Duke of York when she was 17 years old. In November, after a train wreck of an interview with the BBC, he announced he would step away from public duties because of his “ill-judged” friendship with the financier.
In civil court, Maxwell, who has denied any involvement in Epstein’s alleged sex-trafficking ring, has settled two cases — a 2015 defamation case filed by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, and one in 2018 filed by Sarah Ransome, who alleged that Maxwell hired her for “massages” for Epstein and threatened her if she did not comply with sexual requests at the financier’s New York mansion and on his Caribbean island of Little Saint James.
Even before Epstein’s July arrest, Ghislaine Maxwell has been effectively off the grid, if not exactly roughing it. She was last reportedly seen in October, when Sky News reported that she had been at a spa in Santa Catarina, Brazil, with fellow Epstein associate Jean-Luc Brunel.
