Ghislaine Maxwell told the Justice Department that there was no blackmail scheme involving Jeffrey Epstein and denied that she ever saw President Donald Trump in “any inappropriate setting,” according to a transcript of her highly unusual two-day interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for her role in Epstein’s sex trafficking operation, told Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, that the president was cordial and a “gentleman in all respects” in her interactions with him.
Maxwell, who asked the Supreme Court to review her conviction, told Blanche that she “never” saw Trump in any compromising situation.
“I don’t think they were close friends or I certainly never witnessed the President in any of ― I don’t recall ever seeing him in his house, for instance. I actually never saw the president in any type of massage setting. I never witnessed the President in any inappropriate setting in any way. The president was never inappropriate with anybody,” she said, according to the transcript.
Maxwell, however, “struggled to remember decades old events” throughout the interview, as CNN noted, and frequently told Blanche that she did not remember details of her conversations.
And Maxwell’s credibility was previously called into question when she was charged with perjury over alleged lies she told in a 2016 deposition, due to her “willingness to lie brazenly under oath about her conduct,” as noted by ABC News.
Maxwell was granted limited immunity for the interview with Blanche, insulating her from potential charges unless she lied, according to the ABC report.
Blanche was dispatched to interview Maxwell after the Trump administration said it would not release additional files related to Epstein’s case, including documents that reportedly mention Trump, who spent years as close friends with the disgraced financier.
Maxwell denied the existence of an Epstein client list and allegations that he may have been involved in a blackmail scheme.
“There is no list,” Maxwell said, according to the transcript. “I’m not aware of any blackmail. I never heard that. I never saw it, and I never imagined it.”
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Maxwell, who was convicted of child sex trafficking, denied that she sexually exploited minors.
“I did introduce him to women. I did, but not underage women,” she said. “And I did look for masseuses, I did. I went to spas and if I met somebody who said she was a masseuse, I did not check their credentials.”
Maxwell insisted that she was wrongly accused and did not get a fair trial.
“I have no memory … of having seen anybody that resembles a young child, let’s call it what it is, at that house giving him a massage at all,” Maxwell said of Epstein.
“I saw him with a lot of masseuses. I never saw a single masseuse ever look unhappy or not come back or whatever,” she added. “So any time I saw anybody with him, they were happy to be with him.”
Maxwell’s application to review her conviction is pending before the Supreme Court. Her lawyers have said that they have not asked Trump for clemency but would “welcome any relief,” according to ABC News.
The New York Times previously reported that the decision not to release additional Epstein files came after Trump was informed that his name appeared multiple times in the documents. Trump has claimed that he ended his friendship with Epstein in the early 2000s, before his child sex trafficking arrest in Florida.
Maxwell, who was previously held at a low-security prison in Tallahassee, Fla., that housed both women and men, was moved to a minimum-security federal prison camp in Texas that only houses women days after her interview with Blanche.
