Ex-Trump aide Scaramucci says president’s ‘well wishes’ to Ghislaine Maxwell are coded message: ‘Please don’t talk’
President's past association with Jeffrey Epstein has been downplayed in recent yearsAndrew Naughtie @andrewnaughtie
Former White House communications chief Anthony Scaramucci has accused Donald Trump of covertly imploring the arrested socialite Ghislaine Maxwell not to reveal what she knows about him.
In a tweet on Wednesday, Mr Scaramucci wrote: “She has the goods on him. He is signaling ‘please don’t talk.’”
Mr Trump acknowledged Ms Maxwell during a press briefing on Tuesday, his first since April. Asked by a reporter whether he thought she would turn in other powerful men who were potentially involved with Jeffrey Epstein, the president said he hasn’t been following the case closely.
“I just wish her well,” he said. “I’ve met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach and I guess they lived in Palm Beach. But I wish her well, whatever it is.”
Mr Trump was photographed alongside Epstein and Ms Maxwell many times over more than a decade, and once called Epstein a “terrific guy”, saying “he [liked] beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side”.
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Since before Epstein’s death, however, any association between them has been downplayed. Fox News recently had to apologise for “mistakenly” cropping Mr Trump out of a picture featuring the two.
Mr Scaramucci has several times tweeted in support of Epstein-related conspiracy theories, and specifically the idea that the billionaire paedophile was murdered in prison. Among the sources he has retweeted on this subject is far-right male supremacist agitator Mike Cernovich.
Mr Cernovich previously helped propagate the “Pizzagate” theory, which held that Hillary Clinton and her associates were running a child sex ring out of the basement of a Washington pizza restaurant, Comet Ping Pong. (The restaurant does not in fact have a basement.)
Mr Scaramucci was hired as White House communications director in August 2017, upon which he immediately became obsessed with leakers and acquired a reputation for turning on both the press and his fellow aides.
In a notoriously coarse phone interview with The New Yorker during his time at the White House, he boasted of his own sense of mission while denigrating the president’s closest advisers.
“I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own c***,” he told reporter Ryan Lizza. “I’m not trying to build my own brand off the f***ing strength of the president. I’m here to serve the country.”
Mr Scaramucci was sacked shortly afterwards by incoming chief of staff John Kelly.
Mystery surrounds identity of Ghislaine Maxwell’s ‘secret husband’
Prosecutors revealed Ms Maxwell was married, but no one seems to know to whomRichard HallNew York @_richardhall
In the middle of a dramatic court hearing, conducted via videolink due to coronavirus restrictions, the revelation by prosecutors that Ghislaine Maxwell was married went almost unnoticed.
The British socialite had not been seen in the year since the arrest of Jeffrey Epstein, with whom she was accused of conspiring to abuse minors. Finally, at a hearing to decide whether she would be freed on bail ahead of her trial, details about her life in hiding began to emerge.
The prosecutors alleged that Ms Maxwell was not being honest. They believed she had not been transparent about her access to potentially millions of dollars, which gave them cause to believe she was a flight risk. Then, almost in passing, they revealed that she was married.
“The defendant also makes no mention whatsoever about the financial circumstances or assets of her spouse, whose identity she declined to provide to pretrial services,” said Alison Moe, one of three prosecutors in charge of the case.
“There’s no information about who will be co-signing this bond or their assets, and no details whatsoever,” she added.
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The revelation was central to the prosecution’s argument that Ms Maxwell has been disguising her true wealth. Media reports have been rife with speculation that the spouse might be a tech CEO from Boston named Scott Borgerson, with whom she has been romantically linked.
That she had managed to keep the identity of that husband secret from law enforcement and the gaze of the media was a shock to everyone.
“No one knew she was married,” a former friend of Ms Maxwell told The Times.
Even more curious was the fact that there appears to be no marriage certificate in public filings in Massachusetts or New Hampshire, where she was known to have spent time in the last year.
The identity of the husband may yet lead prosecutors down new avenues in the wide-reaching investigation into the sexual abuse of young girls by Epstein.
At the two-hour hearing on Tuesday, Ms Maxwell, 58, pleaded not guilty to six charges, including perjury and enticing minors to engage in illegal sex acts. She stands accused of grooming and procuring young women for her longtime associate and former boyfriend to abuse.
The indictment against her claims that she “assisted, facilitated and contributed to Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of minor girls by, among other things, helping Epstein to recruit, groom, and ultimately abuse victims known to Maxwell and Epstein to be under the age of 18”.
After hearing arguments on Tuesday, US District Judge Alison J Nathan ruled that Ms Maxwell be held in jail until her trial, which was scheduled for July 2021, citing her international connections, her wealth and the seriousness of the charges against her.
“No combination of conditions could reasonably ensure her presence at court. The risks are simply too great,” she said, agreeing with the prosecution’s contention that Ms Maxwell has displayed “sophistication in hiding her resources”.
Ghislaine Maxwell was said to have hired ex-British soldiers as protection prior to arrest (Reuters)
Maxwell’s whereabouts had been the subject of intense speculation since Epstein’s arrest and suicide in custody last year. Media reports have alleged that she was living in other parts of the US, Paris, London and Israel. But the FBI said they had been monitoring her movements as their investigation proceeded, before finally swooping on her latest location in a luxury mansion in New Hampshire. Federal investigators said they had been “discreetly keeping tabs” on Maxwell as they worked the investigation, before finally making their arrest on 2 July.
Prosecutors have so far been unable to ascertain the identity of Ms Maxwell’s mystery spouse. Some have speculated that it may be her last alleged romantic partner, Scott Borgerson, a 44-year-old CEO of a Boston tech company. The Daily Mail reported last year that she had previously lived with him at his oceanfront property in Manchester-by-the-Sea, in Massachusetts, prior to her arrest earlier this month. But he has frequently denied being in a relationship, insisting that they are only friends.
The pair reportedly met in 2013 when they were both speaking on panels at the Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik — a conference that brings together NGOs, politicians and corporations to discuss the future of the Arctic.
Mr Borgerson, who is divorced, is the CEO of a company called CargoMetrics and is described as an “Arctic expert” on his profile page for the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank. According to the profile, he is a former coast guard officer and “has testified before a number of congressional committees, [and] contributed to White House strategic policy making”.
Despite the reports of a relationship between the pair, however, there is no evidence to suggest they are married. Mr Borgerson’s father denied any knowledge of the marriage this week, the Daily Mail reported.
There are several reasons why Ms Maxwell would not want the identity of her spouse to be made public — not all of them nefarious, as prosecutors suggested.
“The most obvious and benign is that she’s trying to shield the spouse from press inquiry and notoriety,” James Zirin—a former assistant United States attorney and partner at law firm Siegel & Kaufman, told Town and Country magazine.
“Other reasons, however, could include that he may have knowledge of where her assets are and of crimes that she may have committed.”
Mr Zirin noted that spousal privilege — a law that states that a spouse cannot be compelled to testify against the other spouse — would mean that whoever it is would be able to refuse to cooperate with the Epstein abuse investigation.
One acquaintance of Ms Maxwell’s suggested to The Times another more practical reason why she married: simply “to protect the money she had”.
But ultimately her attempts to do so ensured that she would remain in jail until her trial. Prosecutors spent much of Tuesday’s hearing detailing how a lack of transparency over Ms Maxwell’s access to millions of dollars “principally in foreign accounts” made it necessary to remand her in custody.
Ms Moe, the prosecutor, said Ms Maxwell cited a net worth of more than $10million when she opened a Swiss bank account last year, and an annual income greater than $200,000.
Her true wealth may be important for other legal actions. In addition to the criminal charges, Ms Maxwell is currently facing civil lawsuits from several of Epstein’s alleged victims, who allege that she was central to the abuse they suffered.
Ms Maxwell, the daughter of late British media mogul Robert Maxwell, began working for Epstein in 1999 and claims to have worked for him until 2006, managing his homes in New York, Florida, New Mexico, Paris and the Virgin Islands.
According to the indictment, which focuses on the years between 1994 and 1997, Ms Maxwell “facilitated” Epstein’s access to underage girls by “inducing and enticing” them for grooming and abuse at multiple lavish properties owned by Epstein.
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These included his Upper East Side townhouse on East 66th Street, where he was known to throw lavish parties; his Palm Beach estate in Florida and his “Zorro” ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Victims were also groomed and abused at Ms Maxwell’s personal residence in London, according to the indictment.
Three minors, unnamed in the indictment, were allegedly induced and enticed by Ms Maxwell.
Ms Maxwell sought to “normalise inappropriate and abusive” conduct to the victim, the indictment reads, undressing in front of her and being present when the victim undressed for Epstein. Within a year of meeting, Epstein was abusing the victim.
“Maxwell was present for and involved in some of this abuse,” according to the court papers, in particular, “in group sexualised massages of Epstein” where the victim would engage in sex acts with Epstein.
At Tuesday’s bail hearing, two alleged victims of Ms Maxwell and Epstein’s abuse addressed the court to argue that she be remanded in custody while she awaits trial. One of them, Annie Farmer, said she was 16 when she met Ms Maxwell.
“She is a sexual predator who groomed and abused me and countless other young women,” she said. “She has lied under oath and tormented her survivors.” She added that Ms Maxwell “has never shown any remorse for her heinous crimes”.
Mark Cohen, the attorney representing Ms Maxwell, said his client has been the “target of endless media spin” as he called for her release on $5m (£3.9m) bail.
“Our client is not Jeffrey Epstein. She is not the monster made out by the media.
No hype, just the advice and analysis you need
In a bail request, that was heard and denied in court on Tuesday, Maxwell’s lawyers proposed a bond of $5m (£4m) alongside home detention with electronic monitoring, and argued that she was not a flight risk.
Ms Moe told the court on Tuesday that Maxwell should be denied bail because of her alleged lies to buy the house and attempts to evade detection from the authorities.
“These facts make clear to the court that the defendant is willing to live in hiding, that she’s good at it...even if it compromises her relationship with other people.
“There can really be no question that the defendant can lie about who she is, and that she has the means to do so.” Ms Moe said.
She added that Maxwell has the “willingness and ability to live off the grid indefinitely,” and highlighted that “a year is an extremely long time to live undetected by the public.”
Maxwell pleaded “not guilty” to the alleged charges earlier in the day on Tuesday.
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