2025-08-23 00:00:00 Departemen Kehakiman pada hari Jumat merilis transkrip yang telah lama ditunggu-tunggu dari wawancara yang berumur beberapa minggu yang dilakukannya dengan jeffrey Epstein yang dihukum Ghislaine Maxwell.
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Follow The Justice Department on Friday released the long-awaited transcripts of a weeks-old interview it conducted with convicted Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
The Maxwell interview was one of two steps the White House took to try and quell outrage over its handling of the Epstein files, which has rocked the administration for weeks and caused even many supporters of President Donald Trump to balk.
Attorney General Pam Bondi and other officials had built up anticipation for the Epstein documents before pulling back on promises to release them.
Trump has also made a series of false and misleading claims that have caused Epsteinâs victims to suggest a cover-up.
The administrationâs other big move â asking to unseal grand jury testimony â hasnât amounted to much.
In fact, two judges have suggested it was a âdiversionâ intended to look transparent without actually being so.
The Maxwell interview conducted by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, likewise, doesnât add much to the public knowledge of Epstein.
But there are some key points worth running through â particularly in the broader context of the administrationâs botched handling of the matter.
Hereâs what to know from the transcript: Maxwell isnât coming clean, which undercut the exercise The Maxwell interview is the administrationâs first significant release of information since its effort to close the matter blew up in its face last month.
(Also on Friday, it sent Epstein documents to a House committee that had demanded them, but those arenât public yet.) But it was always a weird choice, given Maxwell is a convicted sex offender and her appeals are ongoing.
The Justice Department in Trumpâs first term also labeled her a brazen liar.
What could she possibly add of value?
Not a whole lot, it seems.
Related article This undated trial evidence image obtained December 8, 2021, from the US District Court for the Southern District of New York shows British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, right, and US financier Jeffrey Epstein, left.
US District Court for the Southern District of New York READ: Transcript of the Justice Departmentâs interview with Ghislaine Maxwell The big headlines are that Maxwell doesnât implicate anybody â including Trump â in any wrongdoing and says Epstein didnât have a client list.
But those statements might carry more weight if Maxwell came clean about her and Epsteinâs own misdeeds.
She clearly didnât do that.
In fact, she repeatedly cast doubt on them, too.
She denied that Epstein paid her millions of dollars to recruit young women for him.
She denied witnessing any nonconsensual sex acts.
And she denied seeing anything âinappropriateâ from âany manâ â seemingly including Epstein.
âI never, ever saw any man doing something inappropriate with a woman of any age,â Maxwell said.
âI never saw inappropriate habits.â Some other Maxwell responses also call her credibility into question.
In another instance, Maxwell claimed Epstein didnât have âinappropriateâ cameras inside his New York, Caribbean, New Mexico and Paris residences.
Cameras in his Palm Beach, Florida, house were used because money was being stolen.
But Epsteinâs seven-story townhouse in Manhattan was outfitted with cameras, the New York Times reported earlier this month.
Several of Epsteinâs victims have cited a network of hidden cameras.
In another instance, Maxwell indicated she didnât recall recruiting a masseuse from Trumpâs Mar-a-Lago resort â seemingly denying Virginia Giuffreâs claim that thatâs where Maxwell recruited her.
âIâve never recruited a masseuse from Mar-a-Lago for that, as far as I remember,â she said.
But the next day, Maxwell made a point to water down that denial.
âI donât remember anybody that I would have [recruited],â Maxwell said.
âBut itâs not impossible that I might have asked someone from there.â If Maxwell wasnât about to come clean about her own crimes, should we really have expected her to shed light on anything else?
Her answer on Epsteinâs suicide is likely to spur further questions While the interview didnât shed much light, in one way itâs likely to fuel more questions.
On one key point, Maxwell aligned at least in part with those who have lodged conspiracy theories about Epstein, who died by suicide.
âI do not believe he died by suicide, no,â Maxwell said.
Maxwell was asked to speculate on who might have killed Epstein, and she said she didnât know.
Maxwell did break from many of the theories about Epsteinâs death, in that she said she didnât believe he was killed because he was blackmailing people.
Instead, she suggested it could have been an attack unrelated to that.
âIn prison, where I am, they will kill you or they will pay â somebody can pay a prisoner to kill you for $25 worth of commissary,â Maxwell said.
âThatâs about the going rate for a hit with a lock today.â Video Ad Feedback Prison consultant: Maxwell's prison move "unprecedented" 4:54 - Source: Berita Prison consultant: Maxwell's prison move "unprecedented" 4:54 Blanche seemed to take care to emphasize that distinction, repeatedly returning to it.
The administration has said that Epstein did die by suicide, but the information it has offered â including a jailhouse video â has led to questions about how definitive its proof is.
Maxwell has obvious credibility problems and wouldnât necessarily have any unique insight into how Epstein died.
(She said she never called or visited him in jail.) But a recent poll showed Americans said 60%-12% that the government was âhiding informationâ about Epsteinâs death.
And now Epsteinâs top accomplice apparently told the government itâs wrong, for whatever thatâs worth.
She made a point to flatter Trump One of the big questions in the runup to the interview was whether Maxwell was using it to try and win concessions from the Trump administration â and was tailoring her testimony accordingly.
Her lawyer, David Markus, spent the weeks prior often saying nice things about Trump and even suggesting a possible pardon or legal intervention in her ongoing appeals.
Maxwell was also recently moved to a lower-security prison camp that she, as a sex offender, doesnât appear eligible for without a waiver.
The administration still hasnât explained how that happened, weeks later.
And Maxwellâs testimony doesnât exactly refute that she wants something from Trump.
At one point, she took a brief diversion to offer unsolicited praised of his political success.
Related article Annie Farmer, an Epstein accuser, appears on Berita on Thursday.
Berita Epstein victims are a growing political threat to Trump âI just want to say that I find â I â I admire his extraordinary achievement in becoming the president now,â Maxwell said.
âAnd I like him, and Iâve always liked him.â Trump has also said nice things about Maxwell, including bizarrely wishing her well â repeatedly â after she was charged in 2020.
He also repeatedly left open the possibility of pardoning her around the time she interviewed with Blanche, who is Trumpâs former personal attorney.
Blanche told Maxwell she had limited immunity for the interview, but he also said, âIâm not promising to do anythingâ for her.
Names were named, and Maxwell rebuts Trump When the Justice Department said last month that it wouldnât release more information, it cited a desire not to impugn people who havenât been charged with crimes.
Trump himself has repeatedly cited a desire to avoid doing that, including as recently as Friday afternoon.
But notably, the administration now appears to have relaxed that standard.
The transcripts redact only the names of victims and leave in the names of well-known people broached by Maxwell and Blanche.
That includes not only Trump and former President Bill Clinton, but also Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F.
Kennedy Jr., Harvey Weinstein, a former congressman and plenty of others.
Maxwell mentioned some men getting massages but didnât implicate anyone in wrongdoing.
She explicitly said she had never observed Trump getting a massage.
Of Clinton, she said: âI donât believe he did.â Of Kennedy, she said, âI never saw anything inappropriate with Mr.
Kennedy.â She also appeared to rebut one of Trumpâs oft-stated claims about Epstein â that the 42nd president was actually closer to him than Trump was.
Trump has repeatedly claimed Clinton went to Epsteinâs island dozens of times â as many as 28.
But that appeared to rest on a complete misreading of the available information.
And Maxwell said Clinton never once visited the island.
âHe never [did],â Maxwell said.
âAbsolutely never went.
And I can be sure of that because thereâs no way he wouldâve gone â I donât believe thereâs any way that he wouldâve gone to the island had I not been there.â But again, Maxwellâs crimes call her testimony into question.
While she denied seeing any man engage in inappropriate acts, she has in fact been convicted of participating in one manâs: Epsteinâs.
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