Donald Trump was “crazy” about Ghislaine Maxwell from the very start.

Maxwell, the Oxford-educated daughter of a billionaire publishing tycoon, was exactly the kind of company the future US president liked to keep in New York in the 80s.

The pair were regular fixtures in the elite Manhattan and Palm Beach social scenes, attending the same parties at private clubs and on million-dollar yachts.

More than 30 years later, Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence for procuring underage girls for her paedophile ex-boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein, and Mr Trump has been returned to the most powerful office in the world for a second time.

The president’s relationship with the couple has become his biggest political liability.