What We Know:
- The US Justice Department has released transcripts and audio recordings of its July interview with Ghislaine Maxwell
- She is serving a 20-year prison sentence for helping late financier Jeffrey Epstein abuse young girls
- Maxwell, whom Donald Trump has said he’s “allowed” to pardon, says she has never seen Trump “in any inappropriate setting”
- She also claims that allegations about Prince Andrew are not true and says she was not aware of any sort of “client list”
- Former US President Bill Clinton was never a client for Epstein’s masseuses, Maxwell says
- The Maxwell interviews were conducted by justice department lawyer Todd Blanche – who was previously Trump’s personal lawyer
- Pressure has been growing from Trump’s own Republican Party for more transparency around investigations of Epstein
Neither Trump nor Clinton were involved in Epstein’s crimes, Maxwell says from jail
The transcript of an interview between US Department of Justice’s second-in-command Todd Blanche and Ghislaine Maxwell was made public for the first time on Friday.
Maxwell has been serving a 20-year jail term for child sex trafficking and other offences in connection with the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, also a convicted sex offender.
According to the released transcript, Maxwell told Blanche she had never seen President Trump “in any inappropriate setting in any way”. The current president “seemed friendly” with Epstein, she said, but added she only recalled seeing the pair together in “social settings” and not in “private settings”.
On Prince Andrew, Maxwell called the allegations against him “mind-blowingly not conceivable”, partly due to the size of her house where the events allegedly took place. The royal was accused by Virginia Giuffre, who is not named in the transcript, of sexually abusing her when she was 17. Giuffre took her own life earlier this year.
Maxwell said she was not aware of any sort of Epstein client list – after the FBI and DoJ said there was “no credible evidence” that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals.
She also touched upon Bill Clinton, the former US president who flew on Epstein’s private planes 26 times, she said. However, Maxwell stressed that Clinton was a friend of hers, not Epstein’s, adding that no massage services were provided to him.
