Epstein and Maxwell in one of the images released by the US Department of State. | From the US Department of Justice via Anadolu via Getty Images

Last Friday — and then again this Tuesday — the Justice Department released the Epstein files. The documents were incomplete and heavily redacted, angering the Congress members who’d pushed for the release for months. Among the thousands of documents were the grand jury records from the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for aiding Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of hundreds of girls over the course of years.

Barry Levine, the author of The Spider: Inside the Tangled Web of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, traced Maxwell’s path into Epstein’s orbit — from favored daughter of a media tycoon to the accomplice to hundreds of crimes. Levine spoke with Today, Explained host Noel King about Maxwell’s life story and what her relationship with President Donald Trump might mean for her in the coming years. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

What was Maxwell’s upbringing like?

Well, Ghislaine grew up in England in a mansion with 50 or 60 rooms. Her father, of course, was Robert Maxwell, the famous Fleet Street media tycoon. She was the youngest of their nine children.

It was a very strange upbringing in the sense that her father was extremely explosive, and he demanded a great deal of his children. Ghislaine’s mother, Elizabeth, later, in her autobiography, said that her husband Robert would fly into these rages and subject the children to humiliation and harsh treatment, including corporal punishment.

So she grew up privy to a life of obscene luxury. However, it was a very difficult life growing up under her father,

Has she expressed hostility or resentment towards her........

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