And about that pardon ...
Whaddya know - Ghislaine Maxwell says Trump was 'a gentleman in all respects'
By Sam Bellamy
Like Donald Trump, Ghislaine Maxwell is known as someone acquainted with the truth but possessing little to no interest in developing a long-term relationship with it – let alone showing fidelity to it.
Add that reputation to the fact that her recent interview with the Justice Department was conducted by one of Trump’s sycophantic former personal attorneys, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and we get a much-ballyhooed transcript that lands with a thud.
The transcript, released Friday, neither implicates nor vindicates Trump, a longtime friend of the wealthy pedophile-about-town Jeffrey Epstein.
“I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way,” Maxwell told Blanche. “The president was never inappropriate with anybody in the times that I was with him. He was a gentleman in all respects.”
Yeah, that’s our boy all right – a gentleman in all respects. A self-professed “pussy grabber” who pushes international leaders to the side so that he can get to the center of a photo, sleeps with a porn star while his wife is at home with their newborn son and gleefully mocks wounded soldiers and people with disabilities. A regular Lord Chesterfield, he is.
Maxwell also vouched for the gentlemanly behavior of Bill Clinton, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Prince Andrew, saying that she never saw them engage in anything inappropriate, including with girls under the age of consent.
In fact, she said under oath, she was completely unaware of what Epstein was doing around all those girls.
“I just want to be clear that had anybody ever reported anything illegal or disgusting like that, I would’ve immediately done something,” she said, adding “I never heard it. I never saw it. And no one ever, ever, ever complained to me.”
Nevertheless, she’s now serving a 20-year sentence for helping Epstein run a sex trafficking ring. But her prospects are looking rosier.
After her interview with Blanche, she was moved from a maximum-security prison in Florida to a minimum-security facility in Texas, where work-release programs are available if the court deems her eligible. That may not be necessary; Trump has hinted that a pardon could be in the offing.
Maxwell conveniently blames the now-dead Virginia Giuffre for provoking Epstein’s interest in girls. Giuffre said she was 17 when Maxwell recruited her as a masseuse for Epstein, even though she was working for his pal Trump at Mar-a-Lago at the time.
Trump said he broke off his friendship with Epstein over his “stealing” employees from Mar-a-Lago, including Guiffre. Notably, Trump was still singing Epstein’s praises in 2002, roughly two years after Maxwell says Epstein began spending a lot of time with Giuffre.
Giuffre died of an apparent suicide last year, just as Epstein reportedly did in 2019, shortly before he was to stand trial.
Maxwell told Blanche that he doesn’t believe Epstein killed himself but speculates that he was killed over a prison dispute. She mocked the idea that he was targeted by powerful people as “ludicrous.”
Given her reputation for veracity and the involvement of Trump’s former personal attorney in the interview, the Maxwell transcript is of limited value.
Democrats need to continue pressing for the release of all documents related to the investigation of Epstein’s activities.
In addition to the transcript, the Justice Department also delivered files to the Republican-led Oversight Committee on Friday in response to a subpoena.
Those, too, were underwhelming, according to Democrats who’ve seen them.
“Only 3% of the documents given to the Oversight Committee are new. The rest are already in the public domain,” Rep. Ro Khanna of California said in a statement this weekend calling for release of all files.
Khanna accused the Justice Department of stonewalling and said only 1% of the Epstein documents have been released by the administration, despite Trump’s many tough-guy boasts on the campaign trail that he’d make them all public.
Pennsylvania Rep. Summer Lee also said in a statement that the DOJ’s files are “largely thousands of pages of recycled content already made available to the public.”
Lee added, “This partial release is insulting to the survivors who have waited far too long for accountability. Every name, connection, and institution involved in enabling this system of exploitation must be brought to light. The American people deserve the full truth into one of the most disturbing abuse networks in modern history.”
Americans also deserve to learn, definitively, whether Trump joined Epstein in breaking the law and, if not, what and when he knew about Epstein’s behavior while it was happening.