(Washington) Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence, unsurprisingly refused on Monday to answer questions from a committee of the US House of Representatives.
Published at
Updated to
“As expected, Ghislaine Maxwell invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer any questions,” said the Republican president of this commission, James Comer, after a brief hearing behind closed doors, by videoconference from his prison in Texas, describing this decision as “very disappointing”.
The lawyers of Ghislaine Maxwell, engaged in final appeals against her conviction in 2022 to 20 years in prison for sexual exploitation, had warned in a letter to Mr. Comer that she would invoke her right not to self-incriminate, guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment to the American Constitution.
“Her lawyer said she would answer questions if she obtained a presidential pardon” from Donald Trump, added Mr. Comer.
The lawyers had initially demanded criminal immunity in exchange for his testimony, which the parliamentary committee refused to grant him.
This closed-door hearing comes in the midst of a storm caused by the publication on January 30 of masses of documents from the Epstein file, which embarrassed many personalities across the globe.
These “more than three million pages” published by the Department of Justice do not contain any new element that could lead to additional prosecutions, its number 2, Todd Blanche, immediately warned.
PHOTO J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE, ARCHIVES ASSOCIATED PRESS
Todd Blanche, Assistant Attorney General of the United States
But 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.
Maxwell ready to exonerate Trump and Clinton
In his opening statement before the commission on Monday, the lawyer for Ghislaine Maxwell, 64, “said that she had no evidence showing that Presidents Trump or Clinton were guilty of any wrongdoing,” Mr. Comer also stressed.
Former Democratic President Bill Clinton and current Republican President Donald Trump 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.
The same parliamentary committee has summoned Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary, former US 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 last week, saying they wanted to avoid their comments being used by the Republicans.
Todd Blanche, Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, went so far as to go to Florida where she was serving her sentence at the end of July, in a highly unusual move, to question her 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, Ghislaine Maxwell said she did not believe in Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide in prison, without wanting to speculate on the identity of the person responsible for the death of her accomplice and former companion.
Some Americans and figures of the radical right believe that the financier was assassinated to prevent him from implicating personalities who would have benefited from his network of sexual exploitation of young girls.
In the same interview, Epstein’s ex-girlfriend also confirms that he did not keep a “client list”, and was not aware of any blackmail against important personalities.
