Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyers sent a letter Tuesday to House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., which doubles as an unofficial pardon application, of sorts, to President Donald Trump.
The letter formally responds to the committee’s subpoena to depose Maxwell at the Tallahassee, Florida, prison where she is serving a 20-year sentence for conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse minors. Maxwell’s lawyers told the committee in the letter that, for her to testify to Congress, she would need immunity and to put off any testimony until after her pending Supreme Court petition and forthcoming habeas corpus petition for release are resolved. They also asked for any questions in advance so she can prepare.
Otherwise, they said in the letter, “Ms. Maxwell will have no choice but to invoke her Fifth Amendment rights.”
Notably, they went on to write, “Of course, in the alternative, if Ms. Maxwell were to receive clemency, she would be willing—and eager—to testify openly and honestly, in public, before Congress in Washington, D.C. She welcomes the opportunity to share the truth and to dispel the many misconceptions and misstatements that have plagued this case from the beginning.” From there, her lawyers listed several claimed injustices of her case and confinement.
A committee spokesperson already told NBC News on Tuesday that it wouldn’t be granting Maxwell immunity for testimony.
That rejection puts a finer point on what Maxwell would obviously ideally prefer: a pardon.
Trump hasn’t ruled out giving one to the woman who, the Justice Department just recounted in opposing her pending Supreme Court petition, along with Epstein “would identify vulnerable girls living under difficult circumstances; isolate them from their friends and families, gaining their trust by giving them gifts and pretending to be their friends; normalize the discussion of sexual topics and sexual touching with the girls; and then ‘transition[] to sexual abuse, often through the pretext of [a girl] giving Epstein a massage’” (brackets in the DOJ filing). Maxwell’s letter follows her highly unusual meetings last week with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, meetings whose uncertain details leave open the question of whether the administration will seek any formal cooperation or other legal arrangement with Maxwell. Blanche is one of several lawyers who represented Trump personally before his latest election and who now works in the DOJ during Trump’s second term. While the details of Maxwell’s dealings with DOJ last week aren’t public, her lawyers who wrote Tuesday’s letter are well familiar with them. Whatever their full legal strategy is at this point, it explicitly includes seeking clemency — in a letter alleging an “unfair” prosecution — from a president who has complained of unfair treatment in his own several criminal cases. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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