Ghislaine Maxwell, the alleged ex-madam of the late billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, reportedly paid fake news purveyor Jacob Wohl $25,000 to smear the victims of her and her deceased friend.

A former friend of Maxwell’s revealed this to Daily Mail, saying that part of the deal included Wohl and his lobbyist colleague Jack Burkman pushing to have New York US Attorney Geoffrey Berman, who had led the charge against Epstein, fired. The goal behind this was to either slow down or stop the investigation into Maxwell, a 58 year-old British socialite who was finally arrested by the FBI on July 2.

One of the women that Wohl and Burkman tried to use in their smear plot against the victims was Maryland model and paralegal Kristin Spealman, who said they bragged to her about being hired by Maxwell last month to dig up dirt on Epstein’s alleged victims. Though Berman did eventually step down after a push from Attorney General William Barr, who is reportedly friends with Burkman, it did not stop Maxwell from being arrested two weeks later.

When asked for comment on the situation, the 22 year-old Wohl said that Maxwell “deserves representation.”

“Every person, even those accused of the most odious of crimes, deserves representation and possesses the right to engage lobbyists to petition the government on their behalf,” Wohl said. “Otherwise, we cannot comment on client matters.”

Burkman had a similar statement, saying, “All persons accused of crimes–however terrible–have the right to representation and representation in the court of public opinion.”

Spealman had reportedly said that she was told by Wohl and Burkman that Maxwell had hired them through a secretive LLC.

“Her company Granite Realty LLC hired them to first get rid of the US attorney Geoffrey Berman,” Spealman said. “She wanted him fired. And then I guess she assumed the charges would go away or maybe she wouldn’t be prosecuted. I think that was the goal.”

She added that Burkman bragged that he is “really good friends” with Barr, and that he used this connection to convince him to fire Berman.

“The second part of their job was to discredit the [alleged] victims of Jeffrey Epstein and her,” Spealman continued. “I believed those girls, I felt like they were telling the truth and they were real victims. I was disgusted with the things [Wohl and Burkman], were telling me. They were saying really bad things about them.”

“Like the one girl who said she got pregnant by Epstein and they made her get an abortion. Jacob said ‘no, her boyfriend got her pregnant and then she demanded money.’ It was just a lot of stuff that made them look bad,” the model said. “That’s their job now, to discredit these victims. Hopefully so that the charges go away or [Maxwell] wins.”

Maxwell is currently being held without bail on six charges related to her allegedly grooming young girls for sex with Epstein. She is facing up to 35 years in prison if convicted on all charges, and her trial has been scheduled to take place in July of 2021.