A Maxwell Mugshot Emerges

---

I was in line at the supermarket grabbing a bag of ice for a family gathering at the beach, arguing with my eight-year-old about going barefoot in the Fall, when news of Ghislaine Maxwell’s first post-conviction interview broke. I knew this interview was looming. I had asked Daphne Barrack recently about the timing of it, but I did not anticipate it dropping on a Saturday after proudly announcing my weekend log-off.Her image - posed like a mug shot - mid-way through my scrolling sent a shock.

Until now, her visage has only been supported by courtroom sketches and old stock photos. We had all given up on the mugshot. But here she was, staring intently into the camera, an edge of defiance in her stare. This is the Ghislaine Maxwell I recognize from trial. Stark confidence in silent resolve. Prideful to a fault, even in the shapeless prison jumpsuits that came after the cashmere sweaters. With a full hair, straight posture and good brows. The perfectly shaped brows and blunt bob were always a point of intrigue. Causing me to take superficial pause, in wondering how a woman her age, under such grim circumstances, could look so well rested.

My courtroom compliments were not very popular, but the observations were fact based. Apparently, we can deliberate all day long about aspects of an infamous serial killer with half eaten body parts in his freezer at the center of a new Netflix series, but musings on a sex trafficker's hair and wardrobe selections is something criminal.

Her appeal is significant. It’s obviously what aided her most throughout her life. And it is unique, not attributed to any stand-out features or figure but the way she carries herself. With every mannerism marked with poise and confidence. And the rotation of sweaters, a regular topic of trial coverage, was pretty. I can't help if it's my nature to dwell on such things. I can’t stop my brain from cutting circles, trying to figure out who this woman is, by judging turtlenecks. Contemplating if the fit and colors were discussed in detail, or purchased on a whim. Did Isabel or Christine stumble upon a great sale at Saks, and snag six for her, or was there a pintrest board dedicated to nailing innocent attire? Are defendants allowed to browse Neiman and Marcus online before a trial starts? Or do wealthy inmates have access to trial stylists? Perhaps lawyers are expected to offer well-guided suggestions when it comes to desired wardrobe vibes.

Anyway, all valid questions and concerns, in my humble opinion.

---

'Here in America, you're just swamped with appalling press when you are indicted and you have no right to speak.'

As a result, she has been portrayed as the 'Wicked Witch' in the Epstein story.

'All this is a fictional version of me,' she says. 'It has been created to fit the storyline. It has nothing to do with who I am.

'So many people contribute to the fake, created version, like a Disney character, the Wicked Witch if you will.'

---

While this interview, her first since the arrest in 2020, was intended to redirect “misconceptions” about her as “the wicked witch” in this story, her remarks come off mostly arrogant and out of touch. She offers little humility to balance her critiques. But this has always been an ax to her defense. She is, from a courtroom perspective, easily unlikeable. She appears detached and unbothered. Confronting this trial, and the women testifying in front of her, felt like one big inconvenience to her.

When she says, “I think there are many women who can identify with my story. Many have either fallen in love with or had relationships with men that in hindsight they look back on and say 'What was I thinking?' I imagine there's not a woman on the planet who would not think that about one or other of their boyfriends,” we can see just how deluded her internal reasoning is. She doesn’t sound sorry, because she isn’t. What I've come to understand, in speaking to those who know or knew her, is that she genuinely does not think she’s done anything wrong, so she can’t feign empathy, even with a reduced sentence as the incentive.

In the conversations I’ve had (sharing them soon) they all seem to agree on this. In her mind, she was helping poor girls make money, feeding Epstein’s perversities, and gaining the level of power and status she was raised to chase and crave. From her twisted perspective everyone involved was winning. She cannot separate her pride from trial woes.

But isn’t that the Maxwell way?

---

"I never left the country and I had no intention of leaving the country. … This is where I was living and where I intended to live, and it's where I intended to go into my pensionhood."

---

What the interview does accomplish is a few honest admissions. One is the pain of losing close friends. The resentment she feels about seeing these friends "canceled" simply for knowing her. She brings up Andrew, specifically, admitting that she has been paying attention to “what's happening with him” and that she regrets the drastic consequences he is facing for his involvement with her. How sorry that makes her. I read it and wondered why she expanded so much on Andrew after he’s gone out of his way to deny this level of kinship.

What is the real motivation there? Is she truly (deeply) hurt over this loss, or is there a more sinister motive at play? Knowing every name she drops is sure to be analyzed excruciatingly by the media. 

She also, surprisingly, calls into question the legitimacy of the infamous photo taken at her London townhouse of Andrew and Virginia, claiming she now believes it to be fake. Suggesting there are "at least 50 things wrong with it," but cannot say what. An intriguing turn if you are at all familiar with that conspiracy first voiced publicly by Lady Victoria, shared here.

---

“Yes, I follow what is happening to him,' Maxwell confirms. 'He is paying such a price for the association with Jeffrey Epstein. I care about him, and I feel so bad for him.”

---

Trump and Clinton are both highlighted as well. She expressed gratitude for Trump's support. One of the only to wish her well during a “rough time.”

She described her relationship with Bill Clinton as a "special friendship." Which I find quite comical knowing what we know about the nature of that friendship now. That it was sexual and long-lasting. Her phrasing seems to stop just short of hinting at that. But why now? Clinton has remained largely unscathed by his connections to her and Epstein despite being probably the closest of them all. So why new added emphasis? Is this name drop all part of her moving chess game, leading up to appeal? Or is she just missing her old pals?

---

One Clinton:

“It was a special friendship, which continued over the years,' Maxwell says of her association with Clinton. 'Until...' she tails off – a sentence there is no need for her to finish.

'We had lots in common. I feel bad that he is another victim, only because of his association with Jeffrey. I understand that he, like others, can no longer consider me as a friend.”

---

On Trump:

“And in fact, President Trump is famous for thinking and saying what is on his mind like whenever he says it. So I was just very touched, as I said. I appreciate it. It gave me a big boost during such a time.”

---

New details of her Clinton connections, also noted in recent legal documents filed just before her conviction date. They describe her as playing an “instrumental role” in helping form the Clinton Initiative. Almost as if she wants added proof of this layered friendship expanded on.

---

"I don't particularly like the word victim. It's one that should be used very sparingly because, you know, today everybody is a victim of something."

---

Asked if she feels like a victim of Epstein herself, Maxwell said, "I don't particularly like the word victim. It's one that should be used very sparingly because, you know, today everybody is a victim of something."

Maxwell told Barak that her arrest in July 2020, and the fact that she wasn't released on bail, came as "a total surprise."

When asked if she had ever considered trying to flee the U.S. justice system, Maxwell responded: "I never left the country and I had no intention of leaving the country. … This is where I was living and where I intended to live, and it's where I intended to go into my *pensionhood."

*A Maxwell … mentioning pensions, a little reckless, no?

---

---

'I accept that this friendship could not survive my conviction,'

“Though Maxwell had previously indicated in an email to former Epstein attorney Alan Dershowitz that the photo was real, she now says she believes there are more than 50 problems with the image.”

"I don't recognize that picture, and I don't believe it is a real picture," Maxwell said in the interview. "There is no original… and there are that many other things besides that, I cannot hardly get into. But I would very much like to, and as soon as the appeal is over, I will be very happy to discuss it with you.”

---

---

Other notable highlights:

• Ghislaine, like everyone with half a brain, finds Epsteins’s death “suspicious”

• She claims there was a million-dollar bounty on her head and that her cellmate was plotting to kill her while she slept

• She makes it VERY clear that she has “not a single suicidial bone in her body”

• Nobody has internet access. “You can send an email to a short list of approved contacts. But there's no computer – if you have to type anything, it has to be on an old-fashioned typewriter. You haven't seen something like that since probably the 1990s.”

• Maxwell grimaces at her day’s monotony. “They wake you up at six, then at 6.20, something like that, they'll call for what they call 'mainline', which is interesting because I would think that if you're a drug addict that's like the trigger word. That's a meal and consists of milk, a cereal,' she says. 'So nothing happens then until around 10.30 when they call mainline again when you go to what they call lunch. And then nothing happens again until you'll have a count, so you have to stand up at 4 pm and they count you. And after that, you get what's called the main evening meal, which you get approximately 20 minutes to eat. The lights go out at around ten.”

• She has a job: working in the jail's small law library and education center. Helping fellow inmates learn English. 

• She says being put in solitary confinement, placed on suicide watch was punishment for exposing her own prison mistreament.

• The menu offends her. “Two pieces of bread, a piece of baloney (luncheon meat), and a piece of cheese. I'm on a vegetarian diet. So I couldn't eat the baloney. And the cheese had fingerprints on it. Not very sanitary,' she says. “One day I was so hungry that I ate the only thing I had – Vaseline.”

• She says her appeal is already in “full bloom” and that she has a “very very very promising” chance. 

To top things off, rumors of a secret book deal made a CDAN ‘blind item’ last month (I can’t find that screenshot) but stay tuned for the televised Paramount Plus special + my recaps of conversations with ex-employees, friends, a NY live-in dog walker, and other random acquaintances.