“How would you describe sex toys?” a lawyer for the Jeffrey Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre asked Ghislaine Maxwell in a Manhattan office building in 2016.

“I wouldn’t describe sex toys,” the alleged Epstein accomplice replied.

The exchange is characteristic of much of the deposition that Maxwell gave in the civil defamation suit Giuffre filed against her in 2015 after Maxwell denied that Giuffre had been groomed as Epstein’s “sex slave.” The 418-page transcript was unsealed on Thursday morning, following a legal battle that began with the Miami Herald suing for documents in the case to be made public in 2018 and ended in a series of unsuccessful appeals by Maxwell’s lawyers to have the testimony kept private. Over the course of seven hours, Maxwell alternated between obtuseness and evasion. Perhaps above all, she seemed disciplined, stubbornly avoiding saying much of anything and repeatedly denying that she knew Epstein, who was convicted of soliciting an underage prostitute in 2008, was ever in the company of underage girls.

The deposition is the source of the two federal perjury charges that Maxwell was arrested on in July, because, as quoted by prosecutors in the indictment, she denied any knowledge of Epstein’s sex trafficking ring. Maxwell was also charged with abetting the financier’s abuse by recruiting and grooming underage girls. She has pleaded not guilty on all charges and is being held without bail at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center ahead of her trial, currently scheduled for July 2021.

Maxwell has largely been silent throughout the development of the Epstein case, and the deposition is the clearest picture to date of her approach to it. At one point she told Sigrid McCawley, a lawyer representing Giuffre at the time, “Can we agree she was not the age she said and you put that in the press, that is obviously, manifestly, absolutely, totally a lie.”

“I am going to put on the record,” McCawley then said, “Ms. Maxwell very inappropriately and very harshly pounded our law firm table in an inappropriate manner. I ask she take a deep breath, and calm down. I know this is a difficult position but physical assault or threats is not appropriate.”

Maxwell apologized for the incident later in the deposition, but found other ways to express her contempt about being questioned. “I can’t think of anything I have done that is illegal,” she said, before recalling, “I have a DUI in the U.K. a long time ago.” When discussing what she said were Giuffre’s lies, she said that it couldn’t be true that she took Giuffre shopping because a photo of her in a “very expensive” Burberry dress showed that “the outfit doesn’t work at all.”

Maxwell reserved most of her venom, though, for her repeated suggestion that there was a kind of conspiracy among Giuffre, Giuffre’s lawyers, and the media, referring at one point to “just another one of Virginia’s many fictitious lies and stories to make this a salacious event to get interest and press.” When McCawley asked whether Maxwell had ever said to anybody that she recruited girls to take pressure off herself to have sex with Epstein, Maxwell replied, “That’s the question? You don’t ask me questions like that. First of all, you are trying to trap me, I will not be trapped.”

Later in the transcript, Maxwell insisted that McCawley needed a lecture on the definition of “massage.”

Until at least Wednesday, Maxwell’s lawyers had been petitioning for the judge to redact details from the deposition before it was unsealed. The text of a few pages and names are blacked out, but many of the stories surrounding them are familiar. Maxwell was asked whether she had knowledge of a relationship between Epstein and a person whose name was redacted, aside from a business one. Maxwell said she did not, and was then asked why a man whose name was redacted sold or gave a house in New York to Epstein. Les Wexner, the billionaire founder of Victoria’s Secret’s parent company, L Brands, previously owned Epstein’s Upper East Side mansion and had an extensive business relationship with Epstein. (There is a similar correspondence, among others, to a story about a man whose name was redacted and a puppet—though Prince Andrew’s name was not mentioned, most news outlets haven’t bothered to pretend that the exchange could be about anyone else. Slate has explained how many of the redactions can be readily cracked.)

Maxwell shed a bit of light on the history of her relationship with Epstein, which continues to be shrouded in some secrecy. When asked whether she ever considered herself his girlfriend, she replied, “That’s a tricky question. There were times when I would have liked to think of myself as his girlfriend,” adding that this would’ve been “probably” in the early ’90s. The podcast Broken: Seeking Justice reported in September that Epstein and Maxwell met as early as 1988 through Maxwell’s father, the British media baron Robert Maxwell, who died in 1991. In the deposition, Maxwell said she met Epstein through “some friend” in 1991 and that he didn’t know her father. Maxwell also said that she believed she was paid “between 100 and $200,000” while working for Epstein to manage the hiring of staff at his homes, such as pool attendants and gardeners.

Asked why she kept in touch with Epstein after his 2008 conviction, Maxwell replied, “I’m a very loyal person and Jeffrey was very good to me when my father passed away and I believe that you need to be a good friend in people’s hour of need and I felt that it was a very thoughtful, nice thing for me to do to help in very limited fashion which was helping if he had any issue with his homes, in terms of the staffing issues.”

For all the lawyers’ questioning, Maxwell proved elusive enough that after the deposition, McCawley asked the judge in the case to order Maxwell to respond to questions. Maxwell gave a second deposition in July 2016, which still remains sealed. The newly unsealed testimony leaves all kinds of matters related to Epstein and Maxwell unresolved, but it may give a preview of what to expect from her during her trial next year.

Maxwell’s “deposition consisted almost entirely of ‘I don’t recalls’ or ‘I refuse to answer the question’ and also included a physical outburst that knocked the court reporter’s computer off the conference room table,” McCawley wrote in a court filing after the interview.

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