Ghislaine Maxwell says she feels bad for ‘dear friend’ Prince Andrew - The Guardian US

Ghislaine Maxwell has spoken from a US situation compartment astir however she feels “so bad” for her “dear friend” Prince Andrew.

In her archetypal lengthy interrogation since her condemnation connected sex-trafficking charges past year, Maxwell said she inactive cared astir the Duke of York, who has been stripped of royal duties implicit his relationship with the convicted enactment offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaking to the Israeli-American documentary filmmaker Daphne Barak, Maxwell said: “I consciousness truthful atrocious for him. I travel what is happening to him.’’

According to the Sun connected Sunday, which published the interview, Maxwell looked “shaken” erstwhile told that Prince Andrew’s lawyers had claimed the brace were ne'er close.

She replied: “I judge that this relationship could not past my conviction. He is paying specified a terms for the association. I see him a beloved friend. I attraction astir him.”

The remarks volition origin caller embarrassment for Andrew arsenic helium has repeatedly tried to region himself from the disgraced socialite.

Maxwell, 60, was sentenced to 20 years successful situation successful June for procuring teenage girls for Epstein to maltreatment from 1994 to 2005. She continues to contradict the charges.

Epstein was a financier whose elite associates erstwhile included the Duke of York and Bill Clinton. He was arrested successful July 2019 connected sex-trafficking charges and killed himself successful a New York City jailhouse conscionable implicit a period aft his detention.

Barak interviewed Maxwell doubly from situation for an upcoming CBS-Paramount Plus documentary.

She was asked whether she and Andrew could beryllium friends aft her jailhouse word and replied: “I don’t person an expectation. People who I person been friends with, and precise adjacent friends with … I can’t deliberation astir what they volition privation to bash oregon not do.”

The media heiress, whose begetter was the erstwhile Mirror Group proprietor Robert Maxwell, besides spoke astir the infamous representation of Andrew with his limb astir the waist of 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre, with her successful the background.

Maxwell said she present believed the representation was not “a existent image,” having earlier appeared to verify it. In an email to her lawyer successful 2015 that was subsequently leaked, she wrote: “It looks real. I deliberation it is.”

The picture, which has been published astir the world, had been central to Giuffre’s enactment battle suit against the prince. The civilian lawsuit was settled successful March aft helium paid a fiscal settlement, thought to beryllium a multi-million lb sum, to his accuser.

From her situation successful Florida, Maxwell told her interviewer: “I don’t recognise that representation and I don’t judge it is simply a existent picture.”

She past claimed that her email seemingly authenticating the representation was successful information lone to corroborate that she recognised her ain house: “I said ‘it is that representation that, immoderate it is, I recognise it arsenic my house’.”

“But I person travel to observe that representation I don’t judge is true. And the archetypal has ne'er been produced due to the fact that it doesn’t exist. I don’t judge that representation is simply a existent image.”