Convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, who is seeking a pardon from Donald Trump, told top Justice Department officials during an interview last month that she never witnessed the president “in any inappropriate setting” with young girls introduced to him by disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence, makes unfailingly flattering references to Trump, according to transcripts of the conversation released by the Justice Department on Friday. She says she “never” observed Trump receive a “massage,” which is the term prosecutors have said Epstein and Maxwell used as code language to describe sexual encounters with the girls and young women they recruited.
“I actually never saw the President in any type of massage setting,” she said in a hastily arranged interview that took place in Florida over the course of two days last month. “I never witnessed the President in any inappropriate setting in any way. The President was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.”
The Justice Department released the interview materials around the same time it delivered a tranche of the so-called Epstein files to Capitol Hill in response to a congressional subpoena. The information in those files is not yet public. The moves are part of the department’s continued efforts to quell the uproar from Trump’s MAGA base over the administration’s handling of the Epstein files.
In February, DOJ released what it called the “first phase” of documents related to the Epstein investigation, which has been a fixation of some of the president’s supporters. But the limited materials it disclosed to far-right influencers only further infuriated Epstein conspiracy theorists.
It has long been public that Trump — along with other prominent figures — had a relationship with Epstein and was referenced in documents released in court cases involving him. Trump hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing tied to Epstein.
Maxwell was convicted at a jury trial in 2021 of having aided and participated in Epstein’s sex trafficking ring, which the government has said victimized more than 1,000 young women and girls. Epstein died in jail by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Prosecutors have called Maxwell a serial liar and also charged her with perjury but dropped those counts after her conviction on other charges.
Prosecutors have called Maxwell a serial liar and also charged her with perjury but dropped those counts after her conviction on other charges.
Comments