(Washington) The US Department of Justice announced Tuesday that they wanted to question Ghislaine Maxwell, ex-partner and condemned accomplice of the sexual offender Jeffrey Epstein, in order to learn more about this case in which Donald Trump is accused of lacking transparency.
The American president and his government seek to respond to the anger of a part of his base, which accuses him of returning to his promises of transparency in this sensitive file.
The republican billionaire criticized the controversy again on Tuesday by denouncing in the oval office a “series of witch hunt” of which he said he was a victim, after being sentenced last year in a case of occult payments to a star of pornographic films, and prosecuted criminal in three other cases.
Ghislaine Maxwell, the ex-partner and collaborator of Jeffrey Epstein, was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in prison for sexual trafficking, accused of having been the “tout” of Jeffrey Epstein by recruiting between 1994 and 2004 minor girls to exploit them sexually.
“For the first time, the Department of Justice is aimed at Ghislaine Maxwell to ask him: what do you know?” “Wrote on X Todd Blanche, the number two in the department.
His lawyer, David Oscar Markus, confirmed on X being in contact with the department, adding that “Ghislaine will always testify sincerely”.
Anger
The Epstein affair resurfaced and took a political turn on July 7.
On that day, the American government assured that there was no evidence of the existence of a secret list of customers of this rich financier, charged for sexual trafficking in 2019 and which was found dead in its cell a few weeks later, before its trial.
The administration’s announcement has caused Donald Trump’s “Maga” movement.
Figures close to the movement have been campaigning for years to request the publication of documents supposedly hidden by the government, which would contain revelations on leading personalities.
“If Ghislaine Maxwell has information on anyone who has committed crimes or crimes on victims, the FBI and the Department of Justice will listen to what she has to say,” Todd Blanche said in a Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer.
He assures that he himself meets the former worldly currently owned in a prison in Florida “in the coming days”.
The announcement arises while the Department of Justice had opposed the appeal of Ghislaine Maxwell on July 14 to the Supreme Court to obtain the cancellation of the prosecution that led to its conviction.
Paralysis
Visibly annoyed not to manage to extinguish the dispute emanating from his own camp, Donald Trump accused last week “some stupid and idiotic Republicans” of playing his democratic opponents.
He also attacked the defamation the Wall Street Journal After the publication of an article attributing a health letter to him addressed to Jeffrey Epstein.
The billionaire had friendly notoriety of friendly relations with Jeffrey Epstein, like him, of the New York jet-set, but none element attests with reprehensible acts of Donald Trump in connection with the financier.
Beyond the Trump administration, the Epstein affair also threatens to derail the work of the Congress.
The House of Representatives is indeed paralyzed this week by the attempt of an elected Republican, supported by the Democrats, to force a vote on a resolution calling for the publication of court documents on the fallen financier.
Denouncing “political maneuvers”, the republican leader of the lower room, Mike Johnson, makes sure to block this vote, saying during a press point on Tuesday that a publication in block would endanger the victims of the crimes charged to Jeffrey Epstein.
Faced with paralysis, Republican officials decided to send elected officials on vacation on Wednesday for the whole month of August, one day earlier than expected.
Previously, a commission of the House of Representatives had approved the motion of an elected Republican aimed at hearing Ghislaine Maxwell, but without precision for the moment at the place or the date of this hearing under oath.
