The Justice Department on Friday released hours of audio and hundreds of pages of transcripts from its interviews with Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein who is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking.
In the two-day interviews conducted last month by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Maxwell said she does not believe Epstein died by suicide in 2019.
“I do not believe he died by suicide,” Maxwell told Blanche. “I have no idea who could have been behind his death”.
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Praise for Trump, Denial of Inappropriate Conduct
Maxwell flatly denied ever seeing President Donald Trump or former President Bill Clinton engaged in inappropriate behavior.
“I never, ever saw any man doing something inappropriate with a woman of any age. I never saw inappropriate habits,” she said in the transcripts.
Asked specifically about Trump, Maxwell replied:
“Absolutely never, in any context.”
“Trump was always very cordial and very kind to me. I admire his extraordinary achievement in becoming the president … In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.”
She added that she never saw Epstein receive a massage at Mar-a-Lago and complained that people incorrectly viewed her and Epstein as inseparable: “He literally had a separate life from me. I literally had a separate life from him.”
Clintons and Other High-Profile Names
Maxwell confirmed her interactions with the Clintons, recalling a trip with Bill Clinton to Latin America but saying she did not remember its purpose. “I thought it was an honor and a privilege … to spend time with a man that I found truly extraordinary,” she said.
She also mentioned encounters with Elon Musk, Chris Cuomo, Andrew Cuomo, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Maxwell recounted that RFK Jr. once traveled with Epstein in the 1990s to look for dinosaur bones in the Dakotas, but she insisted she never saw inappropriate behavior on that trip.
Maxwell’s Legal Team Responds
Following the release, Maxwell’s attorney David Markus issued a statement on X:
“Ghislaine Maxwell is innocent and never should have been tried, much less convicted, in this case. She never committed or participated in sexual abuse against minors, or anyone else for that matter.
Markus argued that prosecutors only charged Maxwell as a “scapegoat after Jeffrey Epstein died in prison.”
Background
Maxwell was convicted in 2021 for her role in Epstein’s sexual exploitation scheme. She is currently serving her sentence at a minimum-security federal prison in Texas.
