Ghislaine Maxwell first met Jeffrey Epstein for tea in his Madison Avenue office. What she remembers most vividly about the encounter, Maxwell told the Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, in an interview in late July, which was released last week, is Epstein’s tie. “It had a giant, seemed like a ketchup stain on it,” she said. “I was, like, Wow, O.K.”

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It was 1991, and Maxwell had recently called off an engagement and was in the process of moving from London to New York. “And a girlfriend of mine . . . said, ‘I’ve got’—you know, as your girlfriends do—‘I’ve got a guy for you to meet. . . . You’ll love him. He’s looking for a wife,’ ” Maxwell told Blanche at the start of the interview. “I’m edging towards thirty. I don’t

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