Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell got $7.2 million from former tech titan Ted Waitt after he broke up with her — but she wanted “more,” he told a House Oversight Committee hearing.
Waitt, co-founder of the Gateway personal computer company, said he gave Maxwell, who he dated for six years, the substantial parting gift in September 2010 “at the end of our relationship,” according to a transcript of his testimony released Wednesday.
“I just felt it was the right thing to do, not uncommon for people in my situation to do that,” he testified. “It was — we lived a fairly extravagant life.”
But Waitt said he recalled the British socialite “not being happy with the amount, wanting more.”
“She was quite devastated by the breakup. So at that point I — I didn’t want to get directly involved and had my team handle the final details,” he said.
Waitt and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick took part in closed-door interviews with the House Oversight Committee last month as part of its investigation into questions surrounding convicted sex offenders Epstein and Maxwell.
The committee has also requested interviews with five other people, including billionaire Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, billionaire investor Leon Black and Doug Band, who advised former President Bill Clinton in the White House and after he left office.
A March 3 letter seeking Waitt’s interview said only that the committee believed he had “information that will assist in its investigation.” The committee requested the interview after his name surfaced in emails contained in the so-called Epstein files. Neither Waitt, or the others, have been accused of any formal wrongdoing.
Waitt told the committee he gave Maxwell the cash because he “wanted to help her continue to live her life at the level she was accustomed to” after their six years together, ABC News reported.
He described it a “palimony settlement-type thing” because Maxwell had planned to spend the rest of her life with him, according to KTIV.
During his closed-door testimony with committee staffers, Waitt expressed regret over both the gift and the relationship. “I can say unequivocally that if I knew then what I know now about Ms. Maxwell, I never would’ve befriended her or allowed her to be around my four children,” he testified.
Waitt also said that Maxwell downplayed the seriousness of Epstein’s sexual abuse of teen girls following his 2008 guilty plea for soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution, and that it’s “possible” she hid her travels with Epstein from him.
“Through the course of preparing for this testimony, I’ve discovered a lot of things I did not know about her relationship with Mr. Epstein in the time we were dating,” he said.
Epstein died by suicide in a New York City jail cell in 2019 while awaiting federal trial on charges of sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy.
Maxwell was convicted of similar charges in 2021 and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Last year, she met with then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche over two days, after which she was moved to a minimum-security prison camp in Bryan, Texas.
Some members of the House Oversight Committee want President Donald Trump to pardon her in exchange for cooperation with its investigation of Epstein, Republican Chair James Comer told Politico last month.
The committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Robert Garcia of California, said Democrats on the panel were all opposed to the idea. “She is a known abuser. She is a known liar,” he said.
