The revelation this Wednesday of three private emails from Jeffrey Epstein suggesting Donald Trump was aware of his crimes is not the only time the billionaire pedophile case has been the subject of news from Capitol Hill. The financier’s former partner and close friend, Ghislaine Maxwell, is plotting to get President Trump to pardon him, according to documents obtained by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee. Maxwell is also the recipient of one of those new ones. In it, Epstein said one of his victims “spent hours” with Trump at the financier’s home.
If the US president agrees to the pardon, Maxwell’s 20-year sentence for his role in Epstein’s sex trafficking network could be significantly reduced.
The document, which reached Democrats through a confidant, is a message from an inmate to attorney Leah Safian in which she talks about plans to send a document through the warden of the minimum-security prison in Texas where she is serving time. He was transferred from a Florida prison, where conditions of confinement were more severe, in August on orders from the Justice Department, where he has been living.
The move came after Maxwell met with Todd Blanche, deputy attorney general and former Trump lawyer, for nine hours over two days. All details of the conversation were not revealed at the time, other than the fact that Blanche was seen making a list of 100 names and answering her questions “candidly”. Democrats believe the “preferential treatment” she has received since then is tied to some kind of deal with the Trump administration.
In a message sent to her lawyer that surfaced this week, the sender complains about the paperwork. “It’s difficult to sort through it all. The content is very extensive and there are many attachments,” Epstein’s recruiter wrote. A member of British high society (she is the daughter of media mogul Robert Maxwell), she met the financier in New York in the 1990s and remained his indispensable companion until 2019, when he died under bizarre circumstances in a high-security prison cell in Manhattan, under insufficient supervision by the officials in charge of her. Epstein was then awaiting trial on charges of a network of human trafficking and sexual abuse of hundreds of minors.
White House press secretary Caroline Levitt responded during an early afternoon news conference in Washington about whether President Trump is considering pardoning Maxwell. “I’m not talking about it right now, it’s not something I’m thinking about,” he replied. “I guarantee it.”
The Supreme Court recently rejected Maxwell’s appeal against a 20-year prison sentence he received in 2022 for providing victims to Epstein and also being involved in some of his crimes. Now that his path to freedom is closed, his only option is a pardon.
Maxwell also requested exemption to testify before a House committee at a hearing originally scheduled for September 11th, but that hearing was postponed to September 29th and never took place due to the government shutdown, which was ending on its 43rd day this Wednesday.
Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said in a letter to Trump that Trump had also received information from a close confidant that Maxwell was receiving preferential treatment in prison. “They have prison staff cooking her a special meal,” Raskin wrote, adding that she is allowed to carry a computer at her request and the warden allows her to serve “snacks to guests.”
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