Ghislaine Maxwell Claims Prince Andrew's Infamous Photo with His Accuser Virginia Giuffre is 'Fake'

Disgraced British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell opened up in a jailhouse interview in which she cast doubt about Prince Andrew's decades-old photograph with Virginia Giuffre, his accuser and one of  Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking victims. The royal family member was among the names in Epstein's list of clientele whom he allegedly sourced young girls for sexual abuse. 

The convict, a good friend of Prince Andrews, questioned the authenticity of the infamous photograph in her 2023 interview with UK broadcaster TalkTV, "It's a fake. I don't believe it's real for a second, in fact, I'm sure it's not. There's never been an original and further, there is no photograph. I've only ever seen a photocopy of it, Maxwell claimed," as per The Guardian. 

In 2021, Maxwell was found guilty of recruiting and grooming underage girls to Epstein, a mastermind behind the biggest sex trafficking scandal. She's currently serving a 20-year jail time in a U.S. federal prison under this and other offenses related to the deceased sex offender who killed himself inside the prison cell while awaiting his own trial on August 10, 2019. 

Meanwhile, Andrew, the third child of the late British Monarch Queen Elizabeth II, also challenged the photograph in a disastrous 2019 BBC interview, insisting he's never met Giuffre, "I don't believe that photograph was taken in the way that has been suggested. It's a photograph of a photograph of a photograph ... Nobody can prove whether or not that photograph has been doctored." 

Giuffree sued the Duke of York in August 2021 accusing him of sexually assaulting her on three occasions when she was barely 17 years old and an intentional infliction of 'emotional distress' which was 'severe' and 'lasting.' She also alleged that Prince Andrew was among a few other elite names she was sourced to by Epstein and Maxwell for the crime. 

Despite Andrew denying any liability, he reached an out-of-court settlement with Giuffre for an undisclosed amount. The victim's lawyer David Boies wrote in a joint statement with the royal's legal team, "The parties will file a stipulated dismissal upon Ms. Giuffre's receipt of the settlement (the sum of which is not being disclosed)," adding the duke would make a "substantial donation to Ms. Giuffre's charity in support of victims' rights," per BBC. 

The statement continued to state that Andrew "never intended to malign Ms. Giuffre's character [and recognize she had] "suffered both as an established victim of abuse and as a result of unfair public attacks." He also pledged to "demonstrate his regret for his association" with Epstein and would support the "fight against the evils of sex trafficking, and by supporting its victims." 

Epstein and his British accomplice ran a sex racket leveraging powerful people to abuse vulnerable girls and faced criminal charges for the first time in 2006. In the TalkTV interview, Maxwell confessed that "meeting Epstein was the greatest mistake of my life. If I could go back today, I would avoid meeting him and I would make different choices for where I would work," per CBS News.