Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell denied that she saw US President Donald Trump in any inappropriate sexual interactions. This was revealed in records released by the US Department of Justice on Friday.
Maxwell’s interview was conducted by deputy attorney general Todd Blanche in July. The Trump administration released the transcript and audio recording of the interview, to appear more open in the face of intense criticism for its earlier decision to withhold records from the sex-trafficking case.
“I actually never saw the President in any type of massage setting,” Maxwell said, the transcript revealed. “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.”
When her newspaper tycoon father, Robert Maxwell, owned the New York Daily News in 1990, Maxwell remembered learning about Trump and perhaps even meeting him for the first time. She claimed that although she had occasionally visited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, by herself, she hadn’t seen him since the mid-2000s.
Maxwell responded, “Absolutely never, in any context,” when asked if she had ever heard Epstein or anybody else say that Trump “had done anything inappropriate with masseuses” or anyone else in their inner circle.
According to the records, Maxwell continuously praised Trump while denying that she had ever seen him act sexually when Blanche questioned her. Presumably, the Trump administration was keen to make such denials public during a period when the president has been questioned on a long-standing friendship with the disgraced financier and while his administration has been under ongoing scrutiny for how it handled the case’s evidence.
Maxwell was transferred from a low-security federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas after speaking with Blanche. She will serve the remainder of her 20-year sentence for her 2021conviction on allegations of luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein. Four women who had been abused as teenagers at Epstein’s homes in the 1990s and early 2000s provided sordid details during her trial about the sexual exploitation of females as young as 14.
David Oscar Markus, one of Maxwell’s attorneys, stated on social media on Friday that she was “innocent and never should have been tried, much less convicted.” However, neither the federal Bureau of Prisons nor Maxwell’s attorneys have provided an explanation for her move.
Blanche also questioned Maxwell during the interview about the alleged “client list” of well-known individuals that has been the focus of conspiracy theories in recent years.
When asked about several well-known people, Maxwell denied introducing Epstein to Prince Andrew, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., actor Kevin Spacey, and model Naomi Campbell.
Conspiracy theorists focused on the list of his high-profile associates, claiming that the ‘deep state’ was concealing it to shield key players in Epstein’s crimes.