Virginia Giuffre’s family members were shocked to hear President Trump’s claim that Jeffrey Epstein “stole” her from her job at his Mar-a-Lago resort, saying Thursday they think the president knows more than he’s telling.
They also joined the chorus of voices opposed to a rumored potential pardon of Ghislaine Maxwell, who’s serving 20 years in prison as Epstein’s convicted accomplice and a sex offender in her own right.
Giuffre’s family called Maxwell “a monster who deserves to rot in prison for the rest of her life.”
In comments on Monday and Tuesday, Trump further downplayed his friendship with the disgraced financier, who committed suicide in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. Trump has denied knowing anything about what Epstein was up to and said that poaching his employees ended their relationship.
“He stole people that worked for me,” Trump told reporters on Monday, adding that he told Epstein to stop. “He did it again. And I threw him out of the place persona non grata.”
Trump doubled down on those claims Tuesday, and acknowledged that Giuffre — a teenager working as a spa attendant at the time, who later claimed she became a private masseuse for Epstein and one of his sex trafficking victims — was among those poached employees.
Giuffre’s siblings, still reeling from her suicide in April at the age of 41, took Trump to task for referring to their late sister as if she were property and said his statements also raised questions.
“It was shocking to hear President Trump invoke our sister and say that he was aware that Virginia had been ‘stolen’ from Mar-a-Lago,” the family said, according to CBS News. “It makes us ask if he was aware of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal actions, especially given his statement two years later that his good friend Jeffrey ‘likes women on the younger side.’ … We and the public are asking for answers; survivors deserve this.”
Moreover, Giuffre was not poached so much as groomed, her family maintained.
“We would like to clarify that it was convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell who targeted and preyed upon our then 16-year-old sister, Virginia, from Mar-a-Lago, where she was working in 2000, several years before Epstein and President Trump had their falling out,” the family said, calling her “a predator who thought only of herself” as she “destroyed the lives of girls and young women without conscience.”
Davidoff Studios/Getty Images
From left, American real estate developer Donald Trump and his girlfriend (and future wife), former model Melania Knauss, financier (and future convicted sex offender) Jeffrey Epstein, and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell pose together at the Mar-a-Lago club, Palm Beach, Florida, February 12, 2000. (Photo by Davidoff Studios/Getty Images)
Maxwell met with U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche last week and has indicated she would testify before Congress if granted full immunity from future prosecution, among other conditions, including a presidential pardon.
A senior administration official told NBC News that “no leniency is being given or discussed,” and hat Trump acknowledged he has the power to grant a pardon but has not been asked. Neither the U.S. Department of Justice nor Maxwell commented on the Giuffre family’s statement.
With News Wire Services
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