"New York prosecutors gave another description of Maxwell as they unveiled perjury charges against her on Thursday. “She set the trap,” federal prosecutor Audrey Strauss said of Maxwell’s alleged attempts to recruit girls for Epstein. “She pretended to be a woman they could trust” and “in some cases, Maxwell participated in abuse herself”... One Epstein accuser, Maria Farmer, recalled separately that Maxwell would leave Epstein’s New York mansion saying, “I’ve got to go get girls for Jeffrey.” Maxwell has denied the accusations. Maxwell’s arrest by FBI agents on Thursday in a small New Hampshire town... sent new tremors through an old network of friends whose members have been scrambling to distance themselves from Epstein... The network includes not only Prince Andrew, an old Maxwell friend ... It also includes former passengers onboard Epstein’s private plane, dubbed the “Lolita Express”..."

“Another of Epstein's alleged victims, Sarah Ransome... said: "Ghislaine controlled the girls. She was like the madam. She was like the nuts and bolts of the sex trafficking operation... to make sure that the girls were doing what they were supposed to be doing... She knew what Jeffrey liked. She worked and helped maintain Jeffrey's standard by intimidation, by intimidating the girls, so this was very much a joint effort."Born on Christmas Day in 1961 outside Paris, Ms Maxwell is Oxford-educated and said to speak several languages, A well-connected socialite, she is said to have introduced Epstein to many of her wealthy and powerful friends, including Bill Clinton and the Duke of York... Buckingham Palace has said that "any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors" by the duke was "categorically untrue.”

“Royal expert Russell Myers said... Prince Andrew and the royal family... could soon face an absolute tinderbox if and when Epstein’s former partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, agrees to share details regarding her ex and Prince Andrew’s friendship. “As I understand it, there is a bidding war going on for her story – another interview. The palace must be quaking in their boots because not only Prince Andrew’s given that awful interview...” ..Prince Andrew confirmed that he was friends with Maxwell. He also said that it wouldn’t have been possible for him to avoid Epstein because they were linked together by Maxwell.”

“The Oxford-educated British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of the disgraced media tycoon, Robert Maxwell, is at the very centre of controversy this week... it’s a case of did she, didn’t she – to what extent was she bound up, even leading an underground operation? The recently released papers suggest that she was involved in ‘recruiting, maintaining...and trafficking girls for Epstein’. She faces a conspiracy investigation in the United States along with the other former assistants of Epstein – all allegations which she firmly denies.”

“Virginia is an absolute liar and everything she has said is a lie. Therefore, based on those lies I cannot speculate on what anybody else did or didn’t do … everything she said is false.”

“One of the unexpected twists in this sordid tale involves Virginia Roberts, who, at 16-years in 1999, was working as a locker-room attendant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and was solicited by an Epstein “associate,” Ghislaine Maxwell, to become part of Epstein’s prostitution ring.”

“The simple answer just might be that Epstein was in fact an Israeli spy preying on prominent figures and anything having to do with the Jewish state, no matter how malodorous, is a political hotwire and off limits to Democrats and Republicans alike. If all of that is true, we the public will not be seeing anything like a “show trial” of Ghislaine Maxwell that reveals all and names names. She will quietly disappear into the legal system and before too long she will be out and around again...”