Elon Musk is facing renewed scrutiny after convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell contradicted his repeated denials of knowing her or having ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
In newly released transcripts from taped interviews with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Maxwell said she first met the Tesla and SpaceX CEO more than a decade ago at a private Caribbean birthday celebration for Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
“I met him in—I don’t remember the year, but it’s going to be in 2010, ’11, something like that, I think, if my memory serves,” Maxwell, 63, said during the July interviews. She claimed Musk was among a group of roughly 30 to 50 guests who spent “three or four days” on the island celebrating Brin’s birthday.
Maxwell also stated she later saw Musk at an Oscars afterparty, seemingly referencing Vanity Fair’s 2014 bash where the two were photographed together. While she stopped short of alleging a personal relationship between Musk and Epstein, she suggested Musk’s younger brother, Kimbal, also crossed paths with the late financier. Business Insider previously reported that Epstein once set Kimbal up with a girlfriend.
Musk, however, has long insisted he had no connection to Maxwell or Epstein. In 2020, he wrote on X: “Don’t know Ghislaine at all. She photobombed me once at a Vanity Fair party several years ago. Real question is why VF invited her in the first place.”
The testimony could reignite questions about Epstein’s lingering ties to tech power players. Epstein was reportedly advising Brin as early as 2007 on structuring trusts for his children. Musk, meanwhile, has his own history of friction with Brin—denying a rumored affair with Brin’s then-wife Nicole Shanahan in 2022.
The new revelations arrive against a backdrop of political turbulence. Maxwell’s interviews coincided with increasing pressure on the Department of Justice to release the full Epstein files, a demand echoed by Musk himself. In May, Musk’s public feud with Donald Trump intensified after Musk claimed Trump’s name appeared in the files—a post he later deleted, admitting he went “too far.”
Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence but has been transferred to a lower-security prison in Texas, sparking speculation about potential leniency. Her willingness to speak openly with DOJ officials, despite refusing to testify at her own trial, has only fueled further intrigue.
Source: Forbes
