Ghislaine Maxwell slams 'fake' photo of Prince Andrew and Virginia Giuffre in released transcripts

During the conversation, Maxwell said the well-known image of her standing alongside Prince Andrew with his arm around Ms Giuffre’s waist was "literally a fake photo", according to transcripts released on Friday.

Andrew stepped down from public life after the furore over his friendship with the paedophile financier, and paid millions to settle a civil sexual assault case with Ms Giuffre, a woman he claimed never to have met.

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The files also detail how Maxwell, a convicted sex trafficker, insisted that she did not introduce the Duke to Epstein.

During the two-day interview, Maxwell said Epstein first met Prince Andrew at a vineyard in Nantucket, an island off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in the early 2000s.

She told officials that Sarah, Duchess of York, Andrew’s now ex-wife, was the one who had "pushed" the pair’s friendship.

The 63-year-old former girlfriend of Epstein said she was "sure" Andrew himself had suggested he meet Epstein through her.

Maxwell said: "First of all, let’s just state, I did not introduce him to Prince Andrew.

"I did not introduce him to Prince Andrew or to Sarah Ferguson. That is a flat untruth. I’ll start with that."

She continued: "I would never have introduced them. It would never have occurred to me to introduce them. I couldn’t imagine them being friends. Two chalk and cheeses would never… for real, there’s nothing there to connect them.

"So he met Prince Andrew and then he had a really good relationship. I don’t like that word. It sounds clunky."

She added: "I think Sarah is the one that pushed that. And they met and hung out, I want to say two or three times that had nothing to do with me. I wasn’t communicating with Andrew, I wasn’t in touch with him.

"And I know this because I was annoyed and I felt left out, and I felt disrespected and I was like, this is weird. I couldn’t even imagine Epstein and Andrew together.

"And I thought that Sarah was trying to put the moves on Jeffrey, if I’m being honest, and I thought the whole thing was annoying and I was pissed off."

Later in the transcripts, Maxwell said allegations that Andrew and Ms Giuffre had sex in her London home were untrue because at the time of the alleged incident she was at her mother’s 80th birthday celebrations in the countryside outside the city.

She further claimed that Andrew's alleged sex with Virginia Giuffre in her house could not have happened because of the size of the room where it was claimed to have happened.

She added: "The second reason why… probably maybe even the more important reason than my mum’s birthday, that I think it’s absolute rubbish, is that Prince Andrew – the idea of him doing anything of that nature in my house, that’s the size of this room, is so mind-blowingly not conceivable to me, as the man or what… I just can’t… I can’t even… I… no.

"So her description of whatever the two people were doing in the tub, that wouldn’t work.

"The bathroom itself is so small, you can’t lie flat on the floor. So it couldn’t happen on the floor, because you physically, physically can’t.

"This bathroom is too small to even be on the floor."

Asked by Mr Blanche whether the alleged incident in the bathroom was "logistically and physically not something that could have happened", Maxwell said: "Well, there’s that.

"And there’s just… Andrew would… he’s so English. He’s so… he had a tie on."

Asked if there was "any way it could have happened", Maxwell replied "no", according to the transcripts.

Epstein was found dead in his cell at a federal jail in Manhattan in August 2019 while he awaited trial on sex-trafficking charges.

The death was ruled a suicide.

According to the transcripts, Maxwell said she does not believe Epstein died by suicide but does not have a view on who could have been behind his death.

On Friday, Donald Trump's Department of Justice released hundreds of pages of transcripts detailing the conversations between Deputy Attorney General Todd Blance and Maxwell last month.

The conversations took place after a fierce backlash over a previous refusal to disclose records from the Epstein case and subsequent rumours that President Trump featured in them.

Mr Trump and Prince Andrew both deny any wrongdoing.

LBC has contacted Buckingham Palace for comment.