(Washington) Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, unsurprisingly refused on Monday to answer questions from a committee of the American House of Representatives but said she was ready to do so in exchange for a pardon from President Donald Trump.
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“As expected, Ghislaine Maxwell invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer any questions,” declared the Republican president of this commission, James Comer, after a brief hearing behind closed doors, by videoconference from his prison in Texas.
“We had a lot of questions to ask about the crimes she and Epstein committed, as well as possible accomplices,” he recalled, calling the decision “very disappointing.”
This hearing comes in the midst of a storm caused by the publication on January 30 of masses of documents from the Epstein file.
These “more than three million pages” published by the Department of Justice do not contain any new elements that could lead to additional prosecutions, warned its number 2, Todd Blanche.
PHOTO J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE, ARCHIVES ASSOCIATED PRESS
Todd Blanche, Assistant Attorney General of the United States
The Trump administration has thus fulfilled its obligation, imposed by a law adopted in December by Congress, to be fully transparent on this politically explosive issue, said Mr. Blanche, Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer.
Although the mere mention of a person’s name in the file does not imply any reprehensible act a priori on their part, many personalities fear the shock wave of revelations about their past links with the sex criminal.
“Trump and Clinton innocent”
The lawyers of Ghislaine Maxwell, 64, engaged in final appeals against her conviction in 2022 to 20 years in prison for sexual exploitation, had warned that she would invoke her right not to self-incriminate, guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment to the American Constitution. They had initially demanded criminal immunity in exchange for his testimony, which the parliamentary committee had refused him.
Now, she “is prepared to speak fully and honestly if she obtains a pardon from President Donald Trump,” according to the text of her lawyer, David Markus’, statement to the commission, released by the latter.
In particular, she would be prepared to testify that “President Trump and President Clinton are innocent of any wrongdoing. Only Mme Maxwell can explain why and public opinion is entitled to this explanation,” adds the lawyer.
Donald Trump and Bill Clinton both had ties to Jeffrey Epstein but claim to have broken up with him well before his death in prison in New York in 2019 and to have had no knowledge of his sex crimes.
Ghislaine Maxwell is thus trying to send the message “that her silence can be bought by a pardon”, said the elected Democrat Melanie Stansbury.
“It is very clear that this is the message she is trying to send directly to Donald Trump himself,” she insisted.
During this brief hearing, Ghislaine Maxwell “again expressed no regrets. She was very mechanical, showing no remorse in invoking the Fifth Amendment,” said Democratic elected official Suhas Subramanyam.
The same commission summoned Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary, former Secretary of State, to be heard separately at the end of the month, on the links that Bill Clinton maintained with Jeffrey Epstein.
The Clintons demanded public hearings, saying they wanted to avoid their comments being used by the Republicans.
The elected Democrat Ro Khanna, one of the co-authors of the transparency law on the Epstein affair with the Republican Thomas Massie, also indicated on Monday that he would go in the afternoon with his colleague to the Department of Justice to consult the unpublished documents.
Todd Blanche went at the end of July, in a highly unusual move, to Florida where Ghislaine Maxwell was serving her sentence to question him for a day and a half.
Shortly after, she was transferred to a less secure prison in Texas, sparking outrage among victims and their loved ones.
In the transcript of this interview published in August by the Department of Justice, Ghislaine Maxwell said she did not believe in Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide in prison.
Some Americans and figures of the radical right believe that the financier would have been assassinated to suppress possible revelations about personalities who would have benefited from his network of sexual exploitation of young girls.
