By ERIC TUCKER, MICHAEL R. SISAK and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER, Related Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Jeffrey Epstein’s imprisoned former girlfriend repeatedly denied to the Justice Division witnessing any sexually inappropriate interactions with Donald Trump, in keeping with information launched Friday meant to distance the Republican president from the disgraced financer.
The Trump administration issued tons of of pages of transcripts from interviews that Deputy Legal professional Basic Todd Blanche performed with Ghislaine Maxwell final month because the administration was scrambling to current itself as clear amid a fierce backlash over an earlier refusal to reveal a trove of information from the sex-trafficking case.
The information present Maxwell repeatedly showering Trump with reward and denying beneath questioning from Blanche that she had noticed Trump engaged in any type of sexual habits. The administration was presumably desirous to make such denials public at a time when the president has confronted questions on a long-ago friendship with Epstein and as his administration has endured continued scrutiny over its dealing with of proof from the case.
The transcript launch represents the newest Trump administration effort to restore self-inflicted political wounds after failing to ship on expectations that its personal officers had created by means of conspiracy theories and daring pronouncements that by no means got here to go. By making public two days of interviews, officers look like hoping to at the very least briefly hold at bay sustained anger from Trump’s base as they ship Congress proof they’d beforehand saved from view.
After her interview with Blanche, Maxwell was moved from the low-security federal jail in Florida to a minimum-security jail camp in Texas to proceed serving a 20-year sentence for her 2021 conviction on allegations that she lured teenage ladies to be sexually abused by Epstein. Her trial featured sordid accounts of the sexual exploitation of women as younger as 14 informed by 4 girls who described being abused as teenagers within the Nineties and early 2000s at Epstein’s houses.
Neither Maxwell’s legal professionals nor the federal Bureau of Prisons have defined the rationale for the transfer, however certainly one of her legal professionals, David Oscar Marcus, stated in a social media publish Friday that Maxwell was “harmless and by no means ought to have been tried, a lot much less convicted.”
‘By no means inappropriate’
“I truly by no means noticed the President in any kind of therapeutic massage setting,” Maxwell stated, in keeping with the transcript. “I by no means witnessed the President in any inappropriate setting in any method. The President was by no means inappropriate with anyone. Within the occasions that I used to be with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.”
Maxwell recalled understanding about Trump and probably assembly him for the primary time in 1990, when her newspaper magnate father, Robert Maxwell, was the proprietor of the New York Day by day Information. She stated she usually had been to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Seashore, Florida, generally alone, however hadn’t seen Trump because the mid-2000s.
Requested if she ever heard Epstein or anybody else say Trump “had completed something inappropriate with masseuses” or anybody else of their orbit, Maxwell replied, “Completely by no means, in any context.”
Maxwell, a onetime socialite who was convicted in 2021 of serving to lure teenage ladies to be sexually abused by Epstein, was interviewed over the course of two days final month by Blanche at a Florida courthouse. She was given restricted immunity, permitting her to talk freely with out worry of prosecution for something she stated aside from within the occasion of a false assertion.
In the meantime, the Justice Division on Friday started sending to the Home Oversight Committee information from the investigation that the panel says it intends to make public after eradicating sufferer’s data.
Excessive-profile contacts
The case had lengthy captured public consideration partially due to the rich financer’s social connections through the years to outstanding figures, together with Prince Andrew, former President Invoice Clinton and Trump, who has stated he had a falling-out with Epstein years in the past and nicely earlier than Epstein got here beneath investigation.
Maxwell informed Blanche that Clinton was initially her pal, not Epstein’s, and that she by no means noticed him obtain a therapeutic massage — nor did she imagine he ever did. The one occasions they had been collectively, she stated, had been the 2 dozen or so occasions they traveled on Epstein’s airplane.
She additionally spoke glowingly of Britain’s Prince Andrew and dismissed as “garbage” the late Virginia Giuffre’s declare that she was paid to have a relationship with Andrew and that he had intercourse along with her at Maxwell’s London dwelling.
“That might’ve been the one time that I feel that President Clinton might have even obtained a therapeutic massage,” Maxwell stated. “And he didn’t, as a result of I used to be there.”
Maxwell sought to distance herself from Epstein’s conduct, repeatedly denying allegations made throughout her trial about her function. Although she acknowledged that at one level Epstein started preferring youthful girls, she insisted she by no means understood that to “embody kids.”
“I did see from after I met him, he was concerned or — concerned or pals with or no matter, nevertheless you wish to characterize it, with girls who had been of their 20s,” she informed Blanche. “After which the slide to, , or youthful trying girls. However I by no means thought-about that this is able to embody felony habits.”
Epstein was arrested in 2019 on sex-trafficking prices, accused of sexually abusing dozens of teenage ladies, and was discovered useless a month later in a New York jail cell in what investigators described as a suicide.
A narrative that’s consumed the Justice Division
The saga has consumed the Trump administration following a two-page announcement from the FBI and Justice Division final month that Epstein had killed himself regardless of conspiracy theories on the contrary, {that a} “shopper checklist” that Legal professional Basic Pam Bondi had intimated was on her desk didn’t truly exist, and that no further paperwork from the high-profile investigation had been appropriate to be launched.
The announcement produced outrage from conspiracy theorists, on-line sleuths and Trump supporters who had been hoping to see proof of a authorities coverup. That expectation was pushed partially by feedback from officers, together with FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, who on podcasts earlier than taking their present positions had repeatedly promoted the concept that damaging particulars about outstanding individuals had been being withheld.
Patel, as an example, stated in at the very least one podcast interview earlier than changing into director that Epstein’s “black e book” was beneath the “direct management of the director of the FBI.”
The administration had an early stumble in February when far-right influencers had been invited to the White Home in February and supplied by Bondi with binders marked “The Epstein Information: Section 1” and “Declassified” that contained paperwork that had largely already been within the public area.
After the primary launch fell flat, Bondi stated officers had been poring over a “truckload” of beforehand withheld proof she stated had been handed over by the FBI and raised expectations of forthcoming releases.
However after a weekslong evaluate of proof within the authorities’s possession, the Justice Division decided that no “additional disclosure could be acceptable or warranted.” The division famous that a lot of the fabric was positioned beneath seal by a courtroom to guard victims and “solely a fraction” of it “would have been aired publicly had Epstein gone to trial.”
Confronted with fury from his base, Trump sought to shortly flip the web page, shutting down questioning of Bondi about Epstein at a White Home Cupboard assembly and deriding as “weaklings” supporters who he stated had been falling for the “Jeffrey Epstein Hoax.”
The Justice Division has responded to a subpoena from Home lawmakers by pledging to show over data.
Related Press author Adriana Gomez Licon contributed to this report.
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