Ghislaine Maxwell says she feels ‘bad’ for Prince Andrew and thinks incriminating photo of him was faked in first interview from prison

Ghislaine Maxwell says she feels “so bad” for her “dear friend” Prince Andrew, in the convicted sex-trafficker’s first interview from behind bars in a Florida prison.

Maxwell said she understands why her friendship with Andrew, who was stripped of his royal duties because of his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, has been unable to survive.

“I feel so bad for him. I follow what’s happening to him,” she told filmmaker Daphne Barak, who wrote about it in The Mail on Sunday, for an upcoming CBS-Paramount Plus documentary.

Maxwell, 60, was convicted earlier this year of luring young girls who Epstein would molest between 1994 and 2004.

She denied all charges against her and is appealing her conviction for which she was sentenced to 20 years.

“I accept that this friendship could not survive my conviction,” she said from prison. “He is paying such a price for the association. I consider him a dear friend. I care about him.”

While the Duke of York has denied having sex with Virginia Giuffre, he made a $10m settlement with her to stop her case against him proceeding to a civil trial.

The first interview with Maxwell was done at a detention centre in New York, while the second was carried out in a low-security prison in Florida she was moved to over the summer.

Disgraced financier Epstein was arrested in July 2019 on sex-trafficking charges and killed himself in a New York prison a month later.

Maxwell, the daughter of late media tycoon Robert Maxwell, described her relationship with Epstein as the “greatest regret of my life” and said that if she had her time again she would “avoid meeting him.”

But she added that “many women can identify” falling in love with someone they regretted.

Maxwell also addressed the photograph of Prince Andrew with his arm around the waist of 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre, and claimed she now believes that it is not “a true image.”

The photograph was central to Ms Giuffre’s civil lawsuit in New York against Andrew, which he eventually settled with a financial payment while denying any wrongdoing.

“I don’t recognise that picture and I don’t believe it is a real picture,” she said.

She said that an email she sent apparently authenticating the photograph was actually only meant to confirm her home was featured in it.

“But I have come to discover that image I don’t believe is true. And the original has never been produced because it doesn’t exist. I don’t believe that image is a true image.”

In the interview, Maxwell also described her friendship with former US president Bill Clinton as “special” and that they had “lots in common.”

She also said that she felt “honoured” when Donald Trump wished her well before her trial, saying that it had been a “big boost” and that she knew the one-term president as they had “mingled in the same circles.”

Maxwell also said that she regretted that media coverage of her trial had resulted in her becoming a “wicked witch Disney character.”