The Department of Justice released transcripts this week from two days of interviews between Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Ghislaine Maxwell, the jailed accomplice of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking related charges, was questioned as the Trump Administration faces a months-long political storm for its refusal to release the so-called “Epstein files.”
Pressure has been building from Democrats and Republicans alike since the Department of Justice (DOJ) released a memo in July that denied the existence of a “client list” of powerful associates of Epstein’s, ruled his death a suicide, and closed the case. The memo prompted a backlash from President Donald Trump’s own supporters, many of whom had been told for years by people who are now in Trump’s cabinet that there was a grand conspiracy to cover up both Epstein’s suicide and his powerful clients.
That move also drew greater scrutiny of Trump’s decades-long documented friendship with Epstein, and new evidence of their relationship emerged in reporting by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. No evidence of any wrongdoing by Trump relating to the Epstein case has ever been proven, and he has denied claims made in those reports.
Blanche posted a link to the transcripts and audio of his interviews with Maxwell on social media, writing that they were being released “[i]n the interest of transparency.”
Maxwell, who was convicted for her part in Epstein’s crimes of child sex trafficking and for grooming girls to be sexually abused, was interviewed by Blanche in the midst of this media storm in late July.
After the interviews with Blanche, Maxwell was moved to a minimum security prison usually reserved for people who have been convicted of financial crimes. Several House Democrats criticized the move in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, saying it raised concerns that the Trump Administration “may now be attempting to tamper with a crucial witness, conceal President Trump’s relationship with convicted sex offenders, and coax Ms. Maxwell into providing false or misleading testimony in order to protect the President.”
For the interview, Maxwell was granted limited immunity, meaning that whatever she said could not be used against her in a court of law.
During the interview, Maxwell repeatedly claims that she did not introduce Epstein to any minors over the course of their relationship together. Some attorneys have also questioned the validity of Maxwell’s words, as she has in the past been charged with perjury for lying under oath.
Here is what we learned from the 300 pages of transcripts of Blanche’s interview with Maxwell:
Maxwell distances Trump from Epstein
Given that one of the main reasons for Blanche’s visit was likely to ease the pressure on Trump over the Epstein files, it was inevitable that the President’s name would come up in the interviews. It was raised on four occasions. Throughout, Maxwell appeared to draw distance between Trump and Epstein, describing them as “friendly,” but saying she did not witness him engaging in any sexually inappropriate behavior.
“I think they were friendly, like people are in social settings. I don’t think they were close friends, or I certainly never witnessed the President in any of… I don’t recall ever seeing him in his house, for instance,” she said.
She added that she “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.”
Maxwell said she “may” have met Trump back in 1990, before she met Epstein, due to him having been friendly with her father, media mogul Robert Maxwell.
She also claimed that neither she nor Epstein ever poached workers from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, which was down the street from Epstein’s Palm Beach home.
“I’ve never recruited a masseuse from Mar-a-Lago,” Maxwell said, despite the accusations of the late Virginia Giuffre, who claims she was recruited at 16 by Maxwell from working at Mar-a-Lago and then later paid to have sex with Prince Andrew. Though Giuffre was never named in the interview, Maxwell denies Giuffre’s claims.
Maxwell’s words contradict those of the President, though, who told reporters late last month that Epstein “stole” young women who worked at his Mar-a-Lago beach club spa, which led to Trump banning Epstein from his estate.
She says there is no ‘client list’
At the center of many conspiracies regarding Epstein is his purported “black book” of clients—a list of powerful people to whom he allegedly trafficked his young victims.
What many people allege is the black book has been previously published, and then published once more in February by Bondi in the “first phase” of declassified documents related to the Epstein case.
The book features names including Trump and former President Bill Clinton, who were known to have met and socialised with Epstein, but also people named with whom he had never met, and thus listed names are not necessarily connected to his activities.
Since then, though, the public has clamored for more evidence as to who exactly was involved in his crimes, though experts question whether a fully-fledged “Epstein client list” even exists.
Maxwell denied the existence of a client list in her interview with Blanche—repeatedly.
“There is no list. There is no—I’m not aware of any blackmail,” she said. “I never heard that. I never saw it, never imagined it.”
Maxwell was also pressed on Epstein’s relationship with Clinton, current Health and Human Services (HHS) director Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Prince Andrew, and former Trump ally, Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Maxwell did not share incriminating evidence of any high-profile individuals, and seemed to criticize media attention, especially on Trump and Clinton. Broadly, Maxwell stated that she never saw any man doing anything inappropriate:
“I never, ever saw any man doing something inappropriate with a woman of any age. I never saw inappropriate habits,” Maxwell said, although she says it may have happened without her presence: “I’m not saying that Mr. Epstein did not do those things…But what I can say is that I did not participate in that activity.”
She did confirm Kennedy’s relationship with Epstein as friends, stating she had accompanied the two on a “dinosaur bone hunting” trip.
She believes Epstein did not commit suicide
Epstein’s death in a federal prison in 2019, while awaiting trial for sex trafficking charges, has also been the subject of conspiracy theories. In her interview with Blanche, Maxwell said she “did not believe” that Epstein had died by suicide. When pressed further by prosecutors about whether she had any knowledge or ideas of who killed him, she said she did not know.
She said she believed it was someone inside the prison, rather than a “hit” on Epstein.
“In prison, where I am, they will kill you or they will pay—somebody can pay a prisoner to kill you for $25 worth of commissary,” she told prosecutors. “If it is indeed murder, I believe it was an internal situation.”
She denies Epstein worked for Mossad
Maxwell also denies conspiracies that have claimed a connection between Epstein and the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.
When asked by Blanche if she had ever had contact with an individual from Mossad, Maxwell said: “Not deliberately.”
When asked about Epstein, Maxwell said she didn’t “believe so” but “wouldn’t know.”