Elon Musk has landed in the hot seat after Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime accomplice, contradicted his claims that he doesn’t know the disgraced socialite and convicted sex offender.
Maxwell revealed that she first met the world’s richest man at a multi-day birthday bash for Google co-founder Sergey Brin, according to bombshell taped interviews conducted by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in July.
“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, according to the long-awaited transcripts released by the Department of Justice on Friday.
In her testimony, Maxwell claimed Musk was among a group of 30 to 50 people who spent “three or four days” on a Caribbean island celebrating Brin’s birthday.
“Mr. Musk was present for that,” said Maxwell, who was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in jail for sex trafficking minors.
Maxwell told Blanche she later saw Musk at an Oscars event, seemingly referring to a Vanity Fair Oscars party on March 2, 2014, where she and Musk were photographed together, Gizmodo reported.
She denied having personal knowledge of a deeper relationship between Musk and Epstein, beyond emails between the two men that surfaced during discovery.
Maxwell added that she believed Elon’s brother, Kimbal Musk, also had a relationship with Epstein.
“[He knew] Mr. Musk’s brother as well,” she said. “But I don’t — my — like I said, my memory is not — it’s not as good as I would like it to be.”
Kimbal was reportedly set up with a girlfriend by Epstein many years ago, Business Insider reported in 2020.
Musk has repeatedly distanced himself from Maxwell, writing on X in 2020: “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.”
Jeffrey Epstein was reportedly advising Brin in 2007 on setting up a tax-saving trust for his children, according to a 2023 report from The Wall Street Journal. Musk himself has a complicated history with the fellow tech titan: in 2022, Musk denied having an affair with Brin’s then-wife, Nicole Shanahan—who would later become Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate in the 2024 presidential campaign, Gizmodo reported.
At the time, Brin allegedly divested from all of Musk’s companies following the rumored tryst, The Wall Street Journal reported.
If true, Maxwell’s claims bring new information to light amid a growing MAGA civil war, with Trump’s own base lashing out at his administration for failing to release the long-sought Epstein files.
Musk himself has led the charge for their release following a public falling-out with former President Donald Trump, after his role as a special government employee was abruptly ended in late May.
That spat culminated in personal attacks, with Trump threatening the SpaceX founder’s government contracts—and Musk firing back by claiming Trump’s name appeared in the Epstein files.
Musk later deleted the post, admitting he had gone “too far.” When asked about Musk recently, Trump told reporters he was a “good person” who had a “really bad moment.”
Maxwell spoke to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche during a two-day interview last month. She agreed to discuss her relationship with Epstein—despite refusing to testify at her own trial.
Blanche traveled to Tallahassee, Florida, where Maxwell had been serving her sentence. She has since been transferred to a more cushy, minimum-security prison in Bryan, Texas, leading some to speculate she may be receiving special treatment from the Trump administration.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Musk for comment.
