It's useless, but I'm ashamed to admit I found this tiny piece of trivia interesting.

I believe by saying it is coincidental they are saying there is probably no relevance, just an interesting piece of trivia, why put out this interesting piece of trivia? Because maybe someone will be able to make an argument of relevance.

Ghislaine's father (Robert Maxwell) was also a terrible person but for different reasons.

Robert Maxwell was a crook, he used pension funds (supposed to be ring-fenced for the benefit of the pensioners) to prop up his companies, so, after his slightly mysterious death it was discovered that basically there's no money to pay people who've been assured of a pension when they retire.

He was also very litigious. If you said he was a crook when he was alive you'd better hope you can prove it and that you have funding to stay in the fight until you do. So this means the sort of people who call out crooks were especially unhappy about Robert Maxwell because he was a crook and he might sue you if you pointed it out.

I imagine it's the interesting peculiarity that the same people seem to crop up over and over and over again. Six degrees of Kevin Bacon or something, except it's like one or two degrees. As George Carlin said, "it's a big club, and you ain't in it"

For example Donald Barr (father of twice-former US Attorney General Bill Barr) hiring college-dropout Jeffrey Epstein whilst headmaster at the elite Dalton School

Additional fun facts about Donald Barr: he served in US intelligence during WWII, and wrote a sci-fi book featuring child sex slaves

If you want to know more about the history of Pergamon Press there's a great Behind the Bastards episode on Robert Maxwell (Ghislaine Maxwell's father) - who himself was a scumbag in a variety of ways that were entirely distinct from Ghislaine Maxwell's brand of scumbaggery - that covers this. Might even be a multipart episode - it's a while since I've listened to it, but I have a feeling it's at least a two parter.

"Coincidental" means random, with no causal connection being explicitly claimed. It just means that two things share some characteristic (such as being relatives.) The thing that is coincidental is that the person who founded the company being discussed is also the father of another person who current events have brought into prominence.

It's why you would say something like "more than coincidental" if you were trying to make some causal claim, like one thing causing the other, or both things coming from the same cause.

So, "What is coincidental about that?" is a weird question. It reads as a rhetorical claim of a causal connection through asking for a denial or a disproof of one.