Ghislaine Maxwell Cashed Out Years Ago

Several data points in the Ghislaine Maxwell saga have been ignored by nearly all media, US, UK, left, right, and center. This is probably because the whole story is mainly tabloid clickbait to the professionals, while what it says about our elites is better left unmentioned.

Maxwell's entry in Wikipedia is written mostly in UK English, and it does reflect a greater interest among UK tabloids at least to get the details right than in the US. Among the first neglected data points is this:

Following her personal and professional involvement with Epstein, Maxwell was romantically linked for several years to Ted Waitt, founder of Gateway computers. She attended the wedding of Chelsea Clinton in 2010 as Waitt's guest. Maxwell helped Waitt obtain and renovate a luxury yacht, the Plan B, and used it for travel to France and Croatia before their relationship ended, in late 2010 or early 2011.

So given this timing, Maxwell appears to have distanced herself from Epstein somewhere around the time of Epstein's indictment and guilty plea in 2007-2008. Prior to that time, it's generally acknowledged that she'd been his key enabler, recruiter of young girls, keeper of his schedule, and effectively business administrator of his various households. But at some point, this stopped. We know nothing else about this, at least for now.

Another data point we know is that the Lolita Express Boeing 727 took its final flight on July 11, 2016, deteriorating in a Georgia airport ever since, with parts being seized and removed for non-payment of storage fees.

Although the Epstein estate still has a number of aircraft that will be sold to pay victim claims, this is an indication that as of three years prior to his 2019 arrest, this part of Epstein's accustomed lifestyle had become unsustainable. (The link above says the plane was built in 1969, so Epstein would have needed to replace it in any case, something he had almost certainly become unable to afford.)

The 2010-2011 early meetings with Bill Gates are themselves an intriguing data point. At that time, Epstein openly discussed with Gates the need to rehabilitate his reputation and standing in the wake of his guilty plea. But the enabler who "dropped by" the initial meeting was Eva Dubin, not Maxwell, who may well have checked out of the frammis by that time.

Another intriguing data poimt is Epstein's reported threat to the UK Parliament to induce them to approve Jes Staley's appointment as CEO of Barclay's:

On 2nd Nov 2015, The Times reported that the Daily Mail had been leaked emails from Jeffrey Epstein to Parliament or some connected source to blackmail Parliament into accepting Jes Staley as CEO for Barclays. Subsequently in August 2019 it was reported by Bloomberg that Staley had visited Epstein in prison and also on his island, travelling to the latter on Epstein's yacht.

Ever since hearing about this, my reaction was that people at that level simply do not need to make e-mailed threats of anything. That's for Don Corleone, not David Rockefeller. While in that case, Epstein seems to have got his wish, it strikes me as an indication that his hold was slipping, and he knew it.

It sounds to me as if Ghislaine Maxwell had figured this out well before then. According to Maxwell's Wiikipedia entry,

In 2008, Epstein was convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution and served 13 months of an 18-month jail sentence. Following Epstein's release, although Maxwell continued to attend prominent social functions, she and Epstein were no longer seen together publicly.

By late 2015, Maxwell had largely retreated from attending social functions.

At least by 2015, the civil actions against Maxwell by the various underage Epstein victims had begun. At that point, she began to keep an extremely low public profile, and it appears that she married hedge fund CEO Scott Borgerson in 2016. (The photo at the top shows them attending a philanthropic function.) As part of that deal, she sold her principal asset, a Manhattan townhouse that Epstein had gifted her in 2000, and transferred the proceeds to a trust controlled by Borgerson. Given the legal expenses she's had since 2015, it's likely that this amount, plus much of Borgerson's own fortune, will go to lawyers regardless of the outcome.

The main takeaway I have from all these data points is that Maxwell had become aware at a very early point that Epstein was a fading star, and she cut her ties with him well before many of his other associates like Eva Dubin, Jes Staley, or Larry Summers. Indeed, at a certain point, she was forced to cash out.

What does this mean? I think the most important conclusion is that Epstein, by the time of his arrest, was probably aware that he no longer had the ability to run the operation he was able to run in the 1990s and early 2000s, that all his prior allies and enablers would be cutting their losses (and indeed, everyone was getting older), he wouldn't have an additional chance to dodge legal consequences as he had, and he'd come to the end of his run. That his prior cronies and marks were all aging meant that that the value of anything he could disclose about them was steadily decreasing, which meant that any blackmail leverage he may have held was also worth less and less.

My bet is that he hanged himself in his cell.