NEW YORK - Ms. Maxwell, who fought to keep the deposition secret, repeatedly denied that she helped Jeffrey Epstein recruit and sexually abuse teenage girls.
For years, Ghislaine Maxwell has been a central but silent figure in the scandal involving Jeffrey Epstein’s history of abusing teenage girls.
On Thursday, however, Ms. Maxwell offered her fullest response yet to the swirl of claims surrounding Mr. Epstein as a four-year-old deposition was released. In it, she put up a wall of evasions and denials.
Over and over again in the 418-page deposition, Ms. Maxwell, 58, rejected accusations of wrongdoing. She denied that she had recruited minors to give Mr. Epstein sexual massages. She denied that she knew he was abusing girls and young women. She denied having engaged in sexual acts herself with underage people.
“I can’t think of anything I have done that is illegal,” she said.
At one point, Ms. Maxwell was asked more than a dozen times if she believed that Mr. Epstein had abused any minors — and each time she failed to answer. At another point, she parried inquiries about a laundry basket of sex toys, telling the lawyer asking questions, “I need you to define a sex toy.”
Eventually, Ms. Maxwell became so frustrated that she suddenly erupted into a “physical outburst” and knocked the court reporter’s computer off the conference room table, according to a separate document released with her deposition. She later apologized for her behavior, the deposition said.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have charged her with conspiring with Mr. Epstein, a financier, in his abuse of minors. As his closest associate, she is believed to have extensive information about him and others who might have been involved.
But her deposition left unanswered the question of who that might be: Nearly all of the names contained within it — except her own and Mr. Epstein’s — were redacted.
When Ms. Maxwell was arrested, prosecutors said that from 1994 to 1997 she contributed to Mr. Epstein’s abuse of multiple teenage girls — one as young as 14 — and in some cases participated in the abuse. She also was charged with lying under oath in her depositions, which were taken in 2016. She has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
