Yolanda Hadid Denies Claim She Let Ghislaine Maxwell Hide at Her Home

Yolanda Hadid has denied claims that she allowed Ghislaine Maxwell to hide out at her family's Pennsylvania farmhouse in November 2019 before the socialite was arrested last week for allegedly providing late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein with teenage girls to abuse. The former Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star responded on Twitter over the weekend to a tweet thread by Dutch journalist Henk Van Ess, who claimed he tracked Maxwell to a doughnut shop near the Hadids' home in New Hope, Pennsylvania through her IP address, noting she was "friendly with the Hadid family." He wrote in a post, which has since been deleted, "Here are some photos of the place #ghislanemaxwell near #doylestown probably stayed in – the farm of Dutch born Yolanda van den Herik, now called Yolanda Hadid."

Hadid responded soon after to the Twitter thread, denying any association with Maxwell and criticizing the journalist for failing to reach out to her for comment before accusing her of sheltering Maxwell. "I do not know or have ever associated with Ghislane- the first time I have heard about her or any of this was watching the documentary, like the rest of the world, on Netflix," she wrote, adding that the Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich docuseries sparked an "in-depth dinner conversation" with her family about how Maxwell was not "already in jail."

The former reality star added that she had just learned of Maxwell's arrest alongside the rest of the public. "So, I'm not sure how I have been brought into this narrative of yours, but I take these false claims very seriously," she concluded. "Please stop involving me. What that lady did is disturbing and she deserves to be in jail for a long time."

Gigi Hadid, Yolanda's daughter, also took to social media to defend her mother, saying Van Ess' tweets at her were going unanswered initially due to the volume of mentions in the app she "almost never" uses. "My mom, clearly from her timeline, almost never uses the twitter app. this was only brought to her attention by me bc fans were sending me your tweets," Gigi wrote.

Maxwell, the daughter of media proprietor Robert Maxwell, was arrested Thursday in Bradford, New Hampshire, and is facing charges of enticing a minor to travel to engage in criminal sexual activity, transporting a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, conspiracy to commit both of those offenses, and perjury in connection with a sworn deposition. Prosecutors say she went into hiding shortly after Epstein's arrest on sex trafficking charges in July 2019. He was found dead in jail a month later in what was ruled a suicide by hanging.