Ghislaine Maxwell and Clare Bronfman: A Tale of Two Heiresses and the Men Who Dominated Their Lives

Both Clare Bronfman and Ghislaine Maxwell, daughters of rich and powerful men, are in the hands of the justice system due to their association with other rich and powerful men.

Ghislaine was an enabler of Jeffrey Epstein’s perversions. Clare’s enabling of Keith Raniere had more to do with Raniere’s desire for power and money. Clare was a tool. She was ready and willing to fund and personally engage in destructive litigation against Raniere’s enemies. It’s interesting that, in Clare’s case, the partner with money was not the one with the most power in the relationship. Both Clare and Ghislaine allowed men to dominate their lives.

The two heiresses have very different personalities. Clare’s resting facial expression is a curious mixture of haughtiness and entitlement, combined with shyness and introversion. She was so soft-spoken that I sometimes found it impossible to hear her in the courtroom.

Ghislaine, in contrast, has been described as possessing a strong personality and “bombastic charm.” Prior to Epstein’s first conviction, he and Ghislaine made the scene at prestigious Manhattan soirees. Clare led a quieter life. The proprietor of this blog, former NXIVM consultant turned whistleblower Frank Parlato, wrote that Clare once very much dreaded attending a high-profile party. Frank, in a friendly gesture, suggested that she was not obligated to go, justifying her decision to avoid attending.

Their relationships with their father may explain this difference in self-confidence. Ghislaine was the acknowledged favorite daughter of her rich and powerful father. Clare, in contrast, has painful daddy issues, not only as a child of divorce also but from reportedly being the less favored child in comparison with her prettier and more outgoing sister.

 

Both women dabbled in real estate. When Ghislaine came to live in New York after her father’s death, she worked selling real estate in Manhattan for a Madison Avenue firm. She subsequently managed all of Epstein’s properties. In contrast to Ghislaine’s hands-on involvement, Clare’s investment in a real estate company was not even in her name, and required the intervention of a third party, Frank Parlato, to recover her funds.

Journalist Alexender Mercouris of The Duran has pointed out the similarities between Jeffrey Epstein and Robert Maxwell. Both men were reputed to have shadowy ties to domestic and foreign intelligence, particularly Mossad. Both men amassed great fortunes which no one quite knew the origins of. Both men died under mysterious and highly questionable circumstances.

If Clare would have perceived any similarity between the two most important men in her life, Raniere and Edgar Bronfman, it would have been altruism. As his communications to his daughter attest, Edgar Bronfman derived great satisfaction advocating for the state of Israel. He donated large sums of money to Jewish causes. Clare was convinced that Keith Raniere also had altruistic motives. She may have felt that Raniere’s mission was even more important, as it supposedly encompassed all of humanity.

Both women suffered losses in connection with their fathers. Clare must have felt lost and abandoned both as a child of divorce and being the less favored sibling. The death of Ghislaine’s father was a compound loss. She not only lost her father but, due to her father’s shady finances and subsequent collapse of his financial empire, she lost both the fortune and the prestige once associated with being the daughter of Robert Maxwell.

I will insert a bit of astrology here. Anyone may skip this part if it is not your cup of tea.

Ghislaine‘s sun sign is Capricorn. Capricorn is the most practical and the most ambitious sign in the zodiac. Ghislaine has Mars, the planet of action, in very close conjunction to her Capricorn sun, which only increases her drive. A marriage to Epstein, which friends say was her goal, would have restored the fortune and status that Ghislaine lost in the death of her father. Jeffrey had the money, she had the social connections. They would have been a power couple, hobnobbing in the highest social circles of the world. Clare may have also harbored fantasies of marrying Raniere., though for different motives. A marriage to Raniere would have salved her unmet emotional needs (maybe), while raising his profile as a new age/self-help celebrity.

Epstein and Raniere both had an obsession with young, virginal women. Both demanded that their sex partners maintain thin bodies. As I observed in court, Clare was horribly, painfully thin. Clare was reportedly the only one of Raniere’s women who never cheated on his mandated extreme low-calorie diet. As for Ghislaine’s diet, per Vanity Fair here https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/08/the-mystery-of-ghislaine-maxwell-epstein-enabler, “[A] woman in Maxwell’s orbit says she used to joke about keeping herself rail-thin because Epstein liked thin girls. Maxwell, whose father was Jewish, liked to shock. “She said, ‘I do it the way Nazis did it with the Jews, the Auschwitz diet. I just don’t eat.’”

Ghislaine Maxwell is said to be a highly intelligent woman. She is well-educated, she attended Balliol College at Oxford. No one has ever described the uneducated Clare as having a superior brain. Her hapless signing of an open-ended plea agreement, giving the judge discretion to increase her sentence at will, attests to this. With stunning bad timing, she allowed Michael Avenatti to become involved with her defense just prior to Avenatti getting indicted himself.

Ghislaine, however, is a woman with a sharp mind, valuable secrets, and a plan. At this time, she is hoping to be let off due to a 2008 immunity arrangement worked out in Florida for any potential co-conspirators of Epstein’s. If this gambit does not succeed, I have no doubt that she has a Plan B, and then a Plan C, Plan D, and E. Both women are entangled with the justice system, but Ghislaine may be more in control of her destiny than Clare ever was.