On the menu today: Not too long ago, the prospect of the deputy attorney general meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell, the notorious co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein, for two days of questioning, seemed like a potentially enormous development in the aftermath of Epstein’s heinous crimes. On July 24 and 25, the Department of Justice interviewed Maxwell; late Friday afternoon, the department released the transcripts and audio revealing . . . well, not much, really. No one in their right mind expected Maxwell to implicate President Trump — the one man who can pardon her or commute her sentence — in a crime. But if you were looking for evidence of unindicted co-conspirators or additional clients of Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring, the interview looks like the biggest disappointment since Geraldo Rivera went looking in Al Capone’s vault.
Surprise, Talking to a Non-Credible Witness Was a Waste of Time
As Friday afternoon news dumps go, this was a big one: The U.S. Department of Justice released transcripts and audio recordings of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s interview with Federal prisoner 02879-509 — Ghislaine Maxwell. You can find them all here.
When this newsletter last addressed the matter, 63-year-old Maxwell resided in the Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee, Fla., a low-security facility. (Federal prisons are designated as either minimum, low, medium, high, or administrative.) About a week after her interview, officials moved Maxwell to Federal Prison Camp Bryan, in Bryan, Texas, which houses only women; a majority of its inmates are serving time for nonviolent offenses and white-collar crimes.
One of Maxwell’s new fellow inmates is Elizabeth Holmes, the notorious founder of the blood-testing company Theranos, who is serving an eleven-year sentence for fraud and conspiracy. (You can get a sense of the daily life at the minimum-security facility at the link. Also, great news, America, Holmes “says she’s continuing to write patents for new inventions and plans to resume her career in healthcare technology after her release.”)
In December 2021, Maxwell was convicted on five counts, including one of sex trafficking of a minor, for her role in a scheme with Epstein to sexually exploit and abuse multiple underage girls over the course of a decade. In June 2022, she was sentenced to 20 years in prison; she is eligible for release July 17, 2037.
Under federal regulations, sex offenders, whether male or female, are housed in at least “a low security level institution,” although waivers can be granted; as noted above, FCP Bryan is a minimum-security facility.
Elie Honig, CNN’s senior legal analyst, deemed Maxwell’s answers not credible:
In this transcript, Ghislaine Maxwell provides a simply bizarre worldview wherein almost nobody did anything wrong. She doesn’t even actually implicate Jeffrey Epstein. When she’s asked about the crimes that Jeffrey Epstein’s been convicted of, or excuse me, charged with, he died before he could go to trial, she basically says, I don’t have any knowledge of this. I suspect maybe he did some of it but nothing that I know about.
Ghislaine Maxwell herself maintains that she is absolutely 100 percent innocent, and she also essentially implicates nobody else in any type of criminal conduct. So, if one believes that worldview, fine, then maybe Ghislaine Maxwell is credible. I certainly do not. I find it impossible to believe her account of things.
Here is what Maxwell said about President Trump, the only man on earth who could pardon her or commute her sentence:
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: And as far as I’m concerned, President Trump was always very cordial and very kind to me. And I just want to say that I find — I — I admire his extraordinary achievement in becoming the president now. And I like him, and I’ve always liked him. So that is the sum and substance of my entire relationship with him.
TODD BLANCHE: What about Mr. Epstein’s relationship with him?
MAXWELL: I don’t know how they met, and I don’t know how they became friends. I certainly saw them together and I remember the few times I observed them together, but they were friendly. I mean, they seemed friendly.
BLANCHE: Was that in social settings or was that in private settings?
MAXWELL: I believe I only ever saw them in social settings. I don’t recall any private settings.
Maxwell continued:
I actually never saw the president in any type of massage setting. 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.
And at the conclusion of the first day’s testimony, Maxwell said:
I just would like to put out there that I also focused on how I think the president got swept into some of this unnecessarily, by the way. And I’m not a conspiracy theorist, and I certainly don’t subscribe to all the — all of everything that I see. But I do believe that there is animus in some areas that may have contributed to how the use of the president to harm him, that I find deeply offensive.
Maxwell even contended that one of the accusers against Prince Andrew, Virginia Giuffre, was lying, that the bathroom in which a reported encounter occurred was too small, and that a photograph of Prince Andrew and Giuffre together is “fake.” (Giuffre died by suicide earlier this year.)
“The fake news is at work here,” Maxwell insisted. She also contended, “I believe that this whole thing was manufactured, and I can point you to some potentially corroborating evidence of this.”
On Saturday, the family of Virginia Giuffre released an irate statement:
During DAG Todd Blanche’s bizarre interview, she is never challenged about her court-proven lies, providing her a platform to rewrite history. This travesty of justice entirely invalidates the experiences of the many brave survivors who put their safety, security, and lives on the line to ensure her conviction, including our sister.
As part of the discussion, the DOJ offered Maxwell what is called a proffer agreement; Blanche spelled out the terms before the questioning began.
You’ve been given, by your lawyer, a copy of what’s called a proffer agreement. And I just want to spend two minutes making sure that you understand what — what governs our conversation today. The most important part of this agreement is that this isn’t a cooperation agreement, meaning that by you meeting with us today, we’re really just meeting, I’m not promising to do anything.
I’m not promising to ask Judge Nathan or any of the judges that’s been assigned to your case to do anything. It — we’re just talking. And so, that’s the most important — important part of — of this agreement. However, almost as important is the fact that what this agreement does for you is it gives you protection. So what it means is that the government cannot use what you say today against you, with some exceptions, which we’ll talk about in a minute. But whatever you talk about today, you have what’s called immunity. So that means that the words that you say today, we cannot use against you in a case in chief, if we were ever to bring one. There’s exceptions to that. The most meaningful one of which is that if you say something today that’s not true, that’s a lie, we can bring a prosecution against you for what’s called false statements.
Blanche didn’t promise anything. But a week later, Maxwell did get transferred from a low-security prison to a minimum-security prison.
Early on in her testimony, Maxwell said, “No one from the government, at any time, ever in the — since the inception of the case, so dating back to the early 2000s, has ever spoken to me, and indeed, I believe ever reached out to me at any time to even speak to me. And that includes up to when I was indicted and prosecuted. . . . My attorneys, at the time, did tell the government that I wanted to speak to them, because I was very keen to meet with anyone, so that I could tell or have them ask me any question.”
Because nothing Maxwell said in two days of interviews pointed to any criminal activity by anyone who isn’t already convicted or dead, it isn’t all that surprising that no prosecutor was interested in talking to her as a potential witness against anyone else — and that’s putting aside her massive credibility issues.
At this point, it appears that the public will hear from Maxwell only this one time. At the beginning of August, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) sent a letter to Maxwell’s attorneys rejecting her request for full immunity and postponing her scheduled August 11 testimony as negotiations continue.
The word “pardon” comes up in the transcript only in this context:
BLANCHE: Has — have you ever had any contact with an individual that you understand to be from Mossad, an Israeli intelligence agency?
MAXWELL: Well, not deliberately.
BLANCHE: Pardon me?
MAXWELL: Not deliberately.
BLANCHE: Okay. And did you know — we asked this — we talked about this a little bit earlier, but just to put a finer point on it. Did you ever know that Mr. — did you ever — were you ever told — did you ever think that Mr. Epstein was getting any money from any intelligence agency, including Mossad?
MAXWELL: Well, I don’t believe so, but I wouldn’t know. I mean, I would be very surprised if he did. I don’t think so. No.
Since Maxwell’s testimony doesn’t point to any additional crimes or lines of investigation — and rather implausibly claims that accusers of Epstein and Prince Andrew are lying — the entire exercise of interviewing her now seems like a giant waste of time.
Beforehand, Blanche had posted on X: “Justice demands courage. For the first time, the Department of Justice is reaching out to Ghislaine Maxwell to ask: what do you know? . . .
I intend to meet with her soon. No one is above the law — and no lead is off-limits.” It’s easier to say “no lead is off-limits” when the interview subject doesn’t generate any leads.
I can hear it now: “This isn’t news!” That’s a phrase that is often deployed when someone really means, “This isn’t news that I like.”
Oh, and CNN had one other Maxwell-related scoop over the weekend:
Years after she was publicly accused in civil lawsuits and the press of helping Jeffrey Epstein groom and sexually abuse minors, Ghislaine Maxwell was an honored guest at the prestigious Clinton Global Initiative conference in September 2013, according to newly uncovered photos, video and documents reviewed by CNN.
Footage discovered by CNN’s KFile shows Maxwell rising to applause during a CGI luncheon on ocean conservation, recognized alongside other “Commitment to Action” leaders.
Previously unreported information reviewed by CNN lists Maxwell among those recommended for complimentary access to the conference — a list that, according to a source familiar with it, indicates her access was personally recommended by either Bill or Hillary Clinton.
A representative with the Clinton Foundation told CNN, “There were more than 600 comps approved at CGI in 2013. The decisions on those comps were made, as they have been historically, at the staff level, which included the office of President Clinton.”
A notorious criminal sleazeball hanging out at the Clinton Foundation? What were the odds of that?
Back when Bill Clinton went on his book tour for his latest memoir, I asked if anyone would ask the former president about his interactions with Epstein. Recall that flight records indicated that Clinton joined Epstein on the “Lolita Express” plane on at least 26 flights between 2001 and 2003. As far as I can tell, no one did. As apparently the only American who read Citizen, I noted, “The name of Epstein’s notorious accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell — a guest at Chelsea Clinton’s wedding — never appears in the memoir.”
ADDENDUM: CNN, checking in on crime in Washington, D.C.:
In the week beginning August 12, the first full day the Trump administration had control of the Metropolitan Police Department, property crimes dropped roughly 19 percent compared to the week before, and violent crime dipped by about 17 percent, according to the most recent public data published by the MPD.
Those trends vary widely by types of crimes, however. While robberies and car break-ins were down by more than 40 percent, other thefts were flat week-to-week and there was a 6 percent increase in burglary cases and a 14 percent increase in cases of assault with a dangerous weapon, the data shows. There have been two murders since President Donald Trump signed his executive order taking control of the department, which is consistent with recent weeks in DC, though none since August 13.
Thankfully, CNN includes the actual numbers. That “14 percent increase in cases of assault with a dangerous weapon” translates to an increase from 14 reported cases to 16, and burglaries from 16 reported cases to 17. So those increases in the statistics are not good news, but they’re also not the sort of change in a crime rate that local residents are likely to feel or notice.