BusinessInsider | Former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao says Ghislaine Maxwell was rubbing elbows
with Silicon Valley's elites in 2011 — and Pao believes people
suspected Maxwell's ties to child trafficking at the time and didn't
care.
Maxwell was arrested
last week and is awaiting trial for four criminal charges related to
procuring and transporting minors for illegal sex acts. Prosecutors say
Maxwell participated in a sex trafficking operation alongside her
partner Jeffrey Epstein.
Pao, a former partner at venture capital
firm Kleiner Perkins, said Maxwell was at the firm's holiday party in
2011, more than two years after Epstein was first convicted
of soliciting sex from a 14 year old. Maxwell was Epstein's long-time
girlfriend and associate at the time but did not face any criminal
charges prior to her 2020 arrest.
"[Maxwell] was at the Kleiner
holiday party in 2011, but I had no desire to meet her much less have a
photo taken with her," Pao wrote in a tweet,
screenshotted and reposted by reporter Lachlan Markay. "We knew about
her supplying underage girls for sex, but I guess that was fine with the
'cool' people who managed the tightly controlled guest list."
Pao set her Twitter account to private Monday morning after sending
the tweet. When reached for comment by Business Insider, Pao shared two
additional tweets that she subsequently posted clarifying her remarks.
In one tweet, Pao linked to a Daily Mail report published in March 2011 in which Epstein's victims accused Maxwell of participating in the abuse.
"To
be clear, the press had described her as supplying underage girls for
sex, but she had not been charged so I guess it would be more accurate
to say we 'suspected' v 'knew,'" Pao wrote.
According to a 2011 Business Insider report,
the Kleiner Perkins holiday party that year drew esteemed guests
including former Vice President Al Gore, Apple VP of Engineering Mike
Abbott, and former HP chairman Ray Lane.
A Kleiner Perkins spokesperson declined to comment.
