Trump was never inappropriate with anybody, Ghislaine Maxwell tells investigators
By Luc Cohen, Andrew Goudsward and Jack Queen
Jeffrey Epstein’s imprisoned former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, repeatedly denied witnessing any sexually inappropriate interactions with Donald Trump, according to newly released Justice Department records meant to distance the Republican president from the disgraced financier.
“I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way,” Maxwell said, according to the transcript of her two-day interview last month with Deputy Attorney-General Todd Blanche.
Donald Trump and his girlfriend (and future wife), Melania Knauss, with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago in 2000.Credit: Getty Images
“The president was never inappropriate with anybody.”
During the interview, the imprisoned 63-year-old former British socialite also said she did not witness any sexual abuse by Epstein, her long-time boyfriend, and did not implicate any other prominent individuals in wrongdoing.
“He kept a lot to himself, and he didn’t like to share,” Maxwell said of Epstein. “He was not a sharer. Well, at least not with me.”
Maxwell also denied to Blanche that Epstein had maintained any “client list”, saying there was “no list that I am aware of”.
Maxwell, who pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges brought against her in 2020, has asked the US Supreme Court to overturn her conviction.
The interview transcripts were released on Friday (Washington time) as the Trump administration scrambles to present itself as transparent amid a fierce backlash over an earlier refusal to disclose a trove of records from the sex-trafficking case.
Maxwell recalled knowing about Trump and possibly meeting him for the first time in 1990, when her newspaper magnate father, Robert Maxwell, owned the New York Daily News. She said she had often visited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, sometimes alone, but hadn’t seen Trump since the mid-2000s.
Asked if she ever heard Epstein or anyone else say Trump “had done anything inappropriate with masseuses” or anyone else in their orbit, Maxwell replied: “Absolutely never, in any context.”
Epstein died by suicide in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. He had pleaded not guilty.
His death, coupled with his friendships with powerful people like Trump and former Democratic president Bill Clinton, has fuelled conspiracy theories that other people were involved in his crimes, and that he was murdered to cover that up. No one other than he and Maxwell has faced criminal charges.
Duchess ‘put the moves’ on Epstein
Maxwell also told Blanche that Bill Clinton was initially her friend, not Epstein’s, and that she never saw him receive a massage – nor did she believe he ever did. The only times they had been together, she said, were the two dozen-or-so times they had travelled on Epstein’s plane.
She also spoke glowingly of Britain’s Prince Andrew and dismissed as “rubbish” the late Virginia Giuffre’s claim that she was paid to have a relationship with Andrew and that he had sex with her at Maxwell’s London home.
According to the London Telegraph, Maxwell also told Blanche that Prince Andrew’s now ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, had tried to “put the moves” on Epstein.
“I thought that Sarah was trying to put the moves on Jeffrey, if I’m being honest, and I thought the whole thing was annoying, and I was pissed off.”
Maxwell’s lawyer, David Markus, said in a statement on Saturday (AEST) that the interview supported Maxwell’s argument that she was innocent.
“She supported her answers with documents and other objective evidence. Her demeanour and credibility are clear for anyone to hear,” he said. Markus has previously said Maxwell has not held discussions with Trump about a possible pardon, but that she would welcome “relief”.
Maxwell spoke with Blanche on the condition that she not be prosecuted for any self-incriminating statements she were to make, but she could be prosecuted if she lied in the interview.
Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein with then president Bill Clinton at a 1993 event at the White House.Credit: The William J. Clinton President / MEGA
It is rare for a Justice Department official as senior as Blanche, who has also served as Trump’s personal lawyer, to directly interview a criminal defendant.
Maxwell was previously charged with perjury for lying in a 2016 deposition about her knowledge of Epstein’s alleged behaviour, though prosecutors dropped those charges after a jury found her guilty of sex trafficking in 2021.
Trump has said he knew Epstein socially in the 1990s and early 2000s, but later ended their friendship. During Maxwell’s trial, Epstein’s long-time pilot, Lawrence Visoski, testified that Trump had flown on the financier’s private aircraft multiple times. Trump has denied flying on the plane.
AP, Reuters
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