The Justice Department is set to start releasing files on Jeffrey Epstein to the House Oversight Committee on Friday, according to the Committee's chair, Congressman James Comer (R-Ky.).
He says the panel will ensure redactions protect victims and ongoing cases. Comer says the committee is planning to make the files public.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday released transcripts of
interviews that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche conducted with Ghislaine Maxwell last month in relation to sex trafficking cases brought against her and deceased accomplice Jeffrey Epstein.
“In the interest of transparency, @TheJusticeDept is releasing the complete transcript and audio of my proffer of Ms. Maxwell,” Blanche said in a
post on X. “The transcript and audio are linked below.”
Maxwell, a well-connected socialite who was convicted in 2021 of helping lure teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein, was interviewed over the course of two days last month by Blanche at a Florida courthouse. She is currently serving out a 20-year prison sentence in a federal prison. Epstein was found dead in August 2019 in a Manhattan jail cell after he was charged with a new round of sex trafficking counts.
During the first interview, the DOJ indicated that Maxwell was given limited immunity to discuss her criminal case but did not promise her any other benefits in exchange for her testimony.
“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,” Blanche told Maxwell, according to a transcript of the interview. “I’m not promising to do anything.”
Blanche, however, said that she could face additional charges if she lied about anything in their interview.
In one of the interviews, Blanche
asked her about $30 million that prosecutors claim she earned from Epstein for locating and recruiting young women.
He asked her if the notion that she was paid $30 million between 1999 and 2007 as a reward to her “for recruiting young women ... is categorically, completely false?”
“That is categorically false, correct,” she replied at one point, adding that Epstein had “loaned me all the money to enable me to do this and then I reaped the profits, which I don’t remember now, because we varied over the deals that we did, that I would give him 50 percent or 25.”
Maxwell also said she does not believe that Epstein killed himself. The FBI and Justice Department have maintained that he committed suicide by hanging in jail.
“In prison, where I am ... they will kill you for $25 worth of commissary,” she said, responding to a question about why someone would want to kill him. “That’s about the going rate for a hit with a lock today.”
At one point, Maxwell suggested President Donald Trump did not engage in any wrongdoing in connection to Epstein,
saying that she had “never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way.” She said that Trump and Epstein had been “friendly like people are in social settings.”
“I don’t think they were close friends ... I don’t recall ever seeing him in his house, for instance,” Maxwell said.
Maxwell also told the deputy attorney general that she last saw Trump sometime in the “mid-2000s maybe” and that it was “in a social setting.”
