The Trump administration is contemplating publicly releasing the transcript of a Justice Division official’s two-day interview with Ghislaine Maxwell final month, a supply acquainted with the matter advised NBC Information on Tuesday.
“We’re leaning towards transparency,” the supply mentioned.
Deputy Lawyer Common Todd Blanche met with Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirator and confidant, for 9 hours of interviews over two days in July. Former prosecutors advised NBC Information final month that it was extremely uncommon for the Justice Division’s second-in-command to personally interview a witness.
Blanche made no public statements about what Maxwell mentioned or what would come subsequent within the Epstein investigation. Days later, Maxwell was transferred from a Florida jail to a minimum-security jail in Texas the place nearly all of inmates are serving time for nonviolent offenses and white-collar crimes.
Maxwell is serving a 20-year jail sentence for her function in recruiting and trafficking minors for intercourse.
The Bureau of Jail’s personal designation would have made Maxwell ineligible for the switch, as BOP coverage mandates that convicted intercourse offenders should be held in at the very least a low-security-level facility. The one work-around to the rule is that if the bureau’s Designation and Sentence Computation Middle points a waiver.
Epstein survivors and their households have blasted the switch, calling it “preferential therapy.” Former BOP officers have equally derided the transfer, with a former official calling it “a travesty of justice.”
Maxwell has been within the highlight amid fallout from the Trump administration’s dealing with of recordsdata associated to Epstein, the convicted intercourse offender who died in jail in 2019 awaiting trial on federal intercourse trafficking prices.
Members of President Donald Trump’s base, in addition to some Cupboard members, have lengthy advocated for the discharge of the recordsdata, with some selling conspiracy theories round Epstein’s dying. Trump vowed on the marketing campaign path final yr to launch the recordsdata if he had been elected.
The problem grew to become a supply of division between Trump and his MAGA base after the Justice Division mentioned final month that it might not launch any extra recordsdata associated to the case.
Trump has at instances dismissed the significance of the difficulty, however he just lately directed Lawyer Common Pam Bondi to hunt the discharge of pertinent grand jury testimony. The order got here after The Wall Avenue Journal reported that Trump despatched Epstein a “bawdy” birthday card in 2003. Trump later sued the newspaper.
