Ghislaine Maxwell plans to defend Prince Andrew in TV interview

Ghislaine Maxwell is planning to give a TV interview in which she will defend the Duke of York.

Prince Andrew and the then 17-year-old Virginia Roberts Giuffre.

Ghislaine Maxwell is planning to give a television interview in the US in which she will defend her friend the Duke of York, it has been claimed.

The daughter of disgraced newspaper baron Robert Maxwell is said to be in talks with a US network.

Ms Maxwell, who disappeared from public view after Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on charges of child sex trafficking, is apparently ready to stand up for Prince Andrew, 59, after his disastrous BBC interview with Emily Maitlis.

A former girlfriend of Epstein, who killed himself in jail in August, Ms Maxwell is ready to say Virginia Roberts Giuffre is lying about having sex with Andrew three times as a teenager, according to a report in The Sun.

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The newspaper quoted a source as saying: “Ghislaine is in hiding and knows the only way to stop being hunted is to speak on her own terms. “She will do a sit-down interview with a big US network and defend the duke. Apparently, she’ll say Virginia Giuffre is lying and Andrew never had sex with her.”

Ghislaine Maxwell in 2014. Picture: AFP

Ms Maxwell, 57, went out with Epstein when she was living in New York in the 1990s after the death of her father, and later remained close friends with him.

She has been accused of procuring girls for Epstein and even taking part in the abuse. She denies the allegations.

In her BBC Panorama interview last week, Ms Giuffre — who now lives in Cairns, Queensland — described the day she met Prince Andrew in 2001, saying Ms Maxwell told her she “had to do for Andrew what I do for Jeffrey”.

Another woman, Jennifer Araoz, says in a lawsuit that Ms Maxwell “participated in and assisted Epstein in maintaining and protecting his sex-trafficking ring”.

At the weekend, British newspaper The Sun on Sunday published a photograph of Ms Maxwell at Princess Beatrice’s 18th birthday party at Windsor Castle in 2006, standing next to Epstein and film producer Harvey Weinstein. Weinstein, who has been accused of abusing a string of women, was arrested in May last year and charged with rape and other offences, which he denies. He has been released on bail and his trial has been delayed until the new year.

At the time of the party, US police had already raided Epstein’s Florida home and were preparing an arrest warrant for him over child sex allegations.

Prince Andrew has said that Epstein attended as Ms Maxwell’s guest and that at the time he knew nothing of the investigation or the warrant. The last confirmed sighting of Ms Maxwell was when she set off from London on a rally to Geneva, sharing a car with Nettie Mason, wife of the Pink Floyd star Nick Mason.

The Times