Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) on Wednesday questioned disgraced socialite Ghislaine Maxwell’s recent prison transfer, as lawmakers press the Trump administration to release more files related to its probe of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking case.
Maxwell, who was convicted and sentenced to 20 years as Epstein’s co-conspirator, was quietly transferred from a Florida prison to a lower-security prison camp in Texas earlier this month, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The move comes as she is appealing her case to the administration and Supreme Court.
“It was practically instantaneous. And of course, that then speaks to the irregularity of the process leading up to it,” Raskin said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “The Last Word.”
“Remember that this was preceded by the sacking of Maureen Comey, who was one of the senior prosecutors leading that prosecution, and they simply fired her,” he continued. “And then that’s when [Deputy Attorney General] Todd Blanche decided to take matters into his own hands.”
Blanche, who formerly defended President Trump during criminal proceedings, met with Maxwell one-on-one in Florida for two days to discuss Epstein.
The case resurfaced after the Justice Department (DOJ) and FBI released a joint memo last month finding the disgraced financier did not keep a client list. It also sought to dispel conspiracies around his 2019 death in a New York City jail cell, which has been ruled a suicide.
Raskin suggested Blanche helped move Maxwell because he liked what he heard in the closed door meetings.
“So look, I think it seems pretty clear to the vast majority of Americans, as you’re pointing out this evening, that Donald Trump’s got one major interest in this whole affair at this point, which is burying any information that reveals the connection between him and Jeffrey Epstein,” the Maryland Democrat said.
“We know that they had more than a thousand FBI agents working 24-hour shifts, looking for mentions of Donald Trump’s name in the Epstein files and looking for photographs of him, video snippets of him, whatever it might be,” he added.
President Trump, following pressure from his base, ordered the DOJ to make transcripts of the five days of Epstein and Maxwell’s grand jury testimonies public and to ask the court to unseal exhibits related to the case. A judge days later denied the request.
While Republican lawmakers left Washington earlier this summer to avoid the controversy, it is likely to ramp up once again when they return in September.
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