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Maybe this is why Jeffrey Epstein was so close to Ghislaine Maxwell.

The British socialite — who has been accused of procuring underage victims for the mega-rich pedophile — once appeared in a sexy art-book photo spread wearing a tiny, American flag-themed bikini, according to images obtained exclusively by The Post.

The racy pics were taken in the early 1990s, at about the time Maxwell first started getting to know Epstein on the New York social scene, a source with knowledge of the photoshoot said.

“Ghislaine definitely had a more risqué side,” the source said. “ She knew she had a good body and she liked showing it off.”

As she posed for the pics, which ran in a publication meant to promote Sotheby’s vintage fashion collection, she allegedly let slip comments that hinted at a twisted double life.

“She didn’t talk about Epstein, but during the shoot she did tell a story about how she just hosted a dinner party for a number of young girls, and she put dildos at each place setting,” the source said. “Ghislaine then described how during the dinner two guests, who were a couple, began demonstrating how to do the perfect fellatio on a man for all at the table. She was laughing about it.”

Since Epstein’s apparent suicide in a Manhattan federal jail last Saturday, questions have been mounting about Maxwell’s possible role in his alleged sex trafficking ring.

The 57-year-old — who has virtually disappeared from the public eye and whose lawyers have not responded to requests for comment — has been described over the years as the late multimillionaire financier’s girlfriend, closest pal and sex procurer.

Court papers unsealed Friday — just hours before Epstein was found “unresponsive” in his cell — also allege that she served as the “madam” in his alleged ring, recruiting young girls as well as engaging in threesomes with some of the victims. Maxwell has previously denied any wrongdoing.

Maxwell has virtually disappeared. Associates say she has most recently been living in Belgravia, London, but they have not been able to contact her since Epstein was arrested again in June and charged with sex trafficking.

Once a fixture on the New York social circuit, she has become low key in recent years as Epstein became a social pariah following his 2008 sex conviction.

Attorney General William Barr delivered a stern warning to the late pedophile’s cronies during a speech in New Orleans, saying, “Any co-conspirators should not rest easy.”

Barr did not name names, but the feds’ list is most likely headed by Maxwell.

The newly-unsealed court papers, part of a defamation suit that Maxwell settled with Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre shortly before a scheduled 2017 trial, said that “multiple witnesses” had testified that Maxwell was responsible for “recruiting, maintaining, harboring and trafficking girls for Epstein.”

Worse for Maxwell, the court papers allege that she was a “‘co-conspirator’ in Epstein’s sexual abuse,” taking “numerous sexually explicit photographs of underage girls involved in sexual activities” and engaging in three-way sex with Epstein and various girls, according to an opinion written by the late Manhattan federal Judge Robert Sweet.

Among the witnesses who testified against Maxwell — the socialite daughter of the late, disgraced British media mogul Robert Maxwell — during pre-trial proceedings was Rinaldo Rizzo, the house manager for her friend, and Epstein’s ex-girlfriend, Eva Dubin.

“Mr. Rizzo testified — through tears — how, while working at Dubin’s house, he observed [Maxwell] bring a 15-year-old Swedish girl to Dubin’s house,” Giuffre lawyer Sigrid McCawley wrote in motion ­papers. “In distress, the 15-year-old girl tearfully explained to him that [Maxwell] tried to force her to have sex with Epstein through threats and stealing her passport.”

A spokesman for Eva Dubin and her husband, Glenn Dubin, told us in a statement: “Glenn and Eva Dubin are outraged by the allegations against them in the unsealed court records and categorically reject them.”

McCawley also wrote that it was an “undisputed fact” that one of Epstein’s private pilots, David Rodgers, “testified that he flew [Maxwell] and Ms. Giuffre at least 23 times on Epstein’s jet, the ‘Lolita Express’ and that ‘GM’ on the flight log stands for Ghislaine Maxwell.”

Juan Alessi, the house manager at Epstein’s waterfront mansion in Palm Beach, Fla., testified that Maxwell was “one of the people who procured some of the over 100 girls he witnessed visit Epstein, and that he had to clean [her] sex toys.”

Maxwell’s debt-ridden dad, a former member of British Parliament, went missing from his yacht while cruising off the Canary Islands in 1991. His naked body was found by a Spanish fisherman about 15 miles away, and three pathologists who examined Maxwell differed on the cause of death, blaming it on a heart attack and/or drowning.

She is last believed to have been living in London, where she has a historic townhouse in the swank Belgravia section near Hyde Park and a brick country cottage about 90 miles southwest of the city.

She was last photographed in public by The Post, which in January 2015 caught her coming out of an Upper East Side townhouse in which she lived at the time.

The five-story, Beaux Arts mansion at 116 E. 65th St., about nine blocks from Epstein’s townhouse at 9 E. 71st St., was purchased for $5 million in July 2000 by a limited-liability company that was represented by Epstein’s longtime lawyer Darren Indyke. The property was sold for nearly $15.1 million in April 2016.

In the past, Maxwell has reportedly spoken glibly about recruiting girls at spas and trailer parks and getting them to sexually service Epstein. A source close to Maxwell told Vanity Fair, “Ghislaine was in love with Jeffrey the way she was in love with her father. She always thought if she just did one more thing for him, to please him, he would marry her.”

The source added of Maxwell’s attitude towards these young girls procured for sex: “When I asked what she thought of the underage girls, she looked at me and said, ‘they’re nothing, these girls. They are trash’.”

As well as recruiting the girls for Epstein, she would also allegedly groom them for sex, encouraging them to undergo Brazilian waxes and learn about certain sexual techniques.

Maxwell also provided Epstein with an entry into British society, including his friendship with Prince Andrew that lasted until the sex offender’s arrest in June.

Maxwell also carefully massaged Epstein’s alleged friendship with President Bill Clinton. She was photographed at the former first daughter Chelsea Clinton’s lavish July 2010 wedding to Marc Mezvinsky.

She was photographed smiling front and center at the ceremony as President Clinton walked a beaming Chelsea down the aisle in Rhinebeck, NY.

Maxwell was a guest at the nuptials alongside the cream of Washington, DC — despite Epstein having been convicted of soliciting prostitution from underage girls. Clinton insists he had cut ties to Epstein after his arrest over allegations of sex with girls as young as 14.

The last time that Maxwell was seen on the social scene in NYC was in October 2016.

She joined Samantha Boardman, Gigi Mortimer and Candace Bushnell as they attended the VIP Evening of Conversation for Women’s Brain Health Initiative, moderated by Tina Brown at Spring Studios.

A socialite who often partied with Ghislaine told the Post: “What’s crazy — now — is that other women liked her and really thought she was a ‘girl’s girl.’

“I would see her at parties and she seemed perfectly lovely — but then I would hear these stories about her.

“A friend of mine has a whole theory about her, that Epstein was like her father Robert Maxwell, who himself is believed to have had some strange sexual practices.”

Calls to Ghislaine’s Belgravia mansion went unanswered, while calls to her US cell went to voicemail — and she didn’t return messages.