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Ellen Pao Says Tech Firm Invited Ghislaine Maxwell To A Party After Reports She Had Supplied ‘Girls For Sex’

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Ellen Pao, former partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, said Monday that her former employer knew of reports that Ghislaine Maxwell allegedly supplied underage girls for sex to Jeffrey Epstein, but invited her to a 2011 holiday party anyway.

The former Reddit CEO and activist who filed an unsuccessful discrimination lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins in 2012, tweeted Monday that Maxwell attended the 2011 party, but a company spokeswoman denied that the Epstein confidant was there, or even invited.

Kleiner Perkins spokeswoman Allie Cefalo told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the firm does “not have any record of Ghislaine Maxwell being invited to a Kleiner Perkins holiday party,” and said company does not have any record that Maxwell attended the party.

“She was at the Kleiner holiday party in 2011, but I had no desire to meet her much less have my photo taken with her,” Pao said in her Monday tweet. “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.”

???? Ellen Pao, former Reddit CEO and partner at VC giant Kleiner Perkins, says Ghislaine Maxwell attended Kleiner’s holiday party in 2011, and “we knew” about her alleged role in Epstein sex trafficking. Pao has since made her twitter account private pic.twitter.com/6Zgw2qf2FZ

— Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) July 6, 2020

Pao, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, has since made her account private.

“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 added in a later tweet.

When Twitter user said that it seemed Pao was fine with Maxwell attending the party, Pao tweeted in response: “Of course I wasn’t. But I was a junior partner on the outside of the inner circle, and what I said made no difference here and in many other decisions.”

Maxwell was arrested at 8:30 am Thursday morning in Bradford, New Hampshire, and a grand jury has indicted her on charges of conspiracy to entice minors to engage in illegal sex acts, conspiracy to transport minors for illegal sex acts, transportation of a minor to engage in illegal sex acts, and perjury.