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U.S. federal representatives attempted to interview Ghislaine Maxwell on Monday, but the former girlfriend and confidante of Jeffrey Epstein invoked her 5th Amendment constitutional rights to avoid answering questions that could incriminate her. However, she indicated that if President Donald Trump overturns her sentence, she would be willing to testify that neither he nor former President Bill Clinton committed crimes during their association with Epstein.
The House Committee on Oversight and Reform wanted Maxwell to answer questions during a video call from a federal prison in Texas, where she is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking. She is once again under the microscope as lawmakers attempt to determine how Epstein, a well-connected financier, was able to sexually abuse minors for years.
Amid the repercussions of the Epstein abuse cases that have spread to several countries, lawmakers are looking for anyone connected to Epstein who might have facilitated the abuses. So far, revelations have shown that both Trump and Clinton spent time with Epstein in the 1990s and 2000s, but they have not been credibly accused of crimes.
During Monday's closed-door deposition, Maxwell's lawyer, David Oscar Markus, said in a statement to the committee that “Maxwell is prepared to speak fully and honestly if President Trump grants her a pardon.”
He added that both Trump and Clinton “are innocent of any wrongdoing,” but that “only Ms. Maxwell can explain why, and the public has a right to that explanation.”
Democrats said this is a brazen attempt to have Trump overturn Maxwell's sentence.
“It is very clear that she is campaigning for a pardon,” noted Democratic Representative Melanie Stansbury.
Another Democratic lawmaker, Representative Suhas Subramanyam, said that Maxwell's behavior during the brief video call was “robotic” and “unrepentant.”
Trump has not ruled out granting a pardon to Maxwell, but Republican opposition to the idea emerged quickly after Maxwell made the request.
“No pardons. Comply with what is required or face the punishment,” wrote Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna on social media. “You deserve justice to be served for what you did, you monster.”
Maxwell has been requesting that her conviction be overturned, arguing that her verdict was unjust. The Supreme Court rejected her appeal last year, but in December, she requested that a federal judge in New York consider what her lawyers describe as “substantial new evidence” that her trial was riddled with constitutional violations.
Maxwell's lawyer mentioned that request when he indicated to lawmakers that she would invoke her 5th Amendment constitutional rights.
Republican Representative James Comer, chairman of the panel, noted that it was “very disappointing” that Maxwell refused to participate in the deposition.
Relatives of the late Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein's best-known victims, also published a letter addressed to Maxwell in which they made it clear that they do not consider her a simple “bystander” to Epstein's abuses.
“You were a central and deliberate actor in a system built to find minors, isolate them, groom them, and hand them over for abuse,” Sky and Amanda Roberts wrote in the letter.
Maxwell was transferred midway through last year from a federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security correctional facility in Texas following a series of interviews over two days with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
Comer had also subpoenaed her to testify at that time, but her lawyers have repeatedly informed the committee that she will not answer their questions. Despite this, Comer was under pressure to conduct the video call while pushing the panel to enforce subpoenas for former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The parties reached an agreement to testify this month after Comer threatened them with contempt of Congress charges.
Comer has been negotiating with the Clintons over whether that testimony should take place in a public hearing, but the lawmaker reiterated on Monday that he would insist on closed-door depositions and then release transcripts and videos.
Meanwhile, several lawmakers visited a Department of Justice office in Washington on Monday to review unredacted versions of the files on Epstein that the department has released under a law Congress passed last year. As part of an agreement with the Department of Justice, they were given access to more than 3 million files in a reading room with four computers. Lawmakers can only take handwritten notes, and they are not allowed to be accompanied by aides.
Representative Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, spent several hours in the reading room on Monday morning. He told reporters upon returning to the Capitol that even if every lawmaker who pushed for the vote to release the files “spent every waking hour at the Department of Justice, it would still take us months to review all those documents.”
“I think the Department of Justice has been in cover-up mode for many months and has been trying to sweep everything under the rug,” he added.
Democrats on Raskin's committee are looking forward to a hearing scheduled for Wednesday with Attorney General Pam Bondi, where they are expected to question her severely regarding the release of the Epstein files. The Department of Justice failed to redact the personal information of many victims, including the release of nude photos of them. Democrats also say the Department of Justice redacted information that should have been made public, such as information that could lead to scrutiny of Epstein's associates.
“Again and again we begged them, please be careful, please be more careful,” said Jennifer Freeman, an attorney representing the victims. “The damage is done. It seems done incompetently, intimidatingly, and intentionally.”
The release of the files has triggered multiple political crises in other parts of the world, including in the United Kingdom, where Prime Minister Keir Starmer is clinging to his job after it was revealed that his former ambassador to the United States had maintained close ties to Epstein. But Democratic lawmakers lamented that so far, American political figures seem to be getting off scot-free.
“I only fear that the general coarsening and degradation of American life has somehow conditioned people not to take this as seriously as we should,” Raskin stated.
[Publicidad]