The Trump administration on Friday released transcripts and audio recordings of convicted Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell’s unusual interview last month with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. Blanche, who was previously President Donald Trump’s personal defense lawyer, met with Maxwell amid political backlash over the administration’s refusal to release all the information it has related to Epstein.
The release of these transcripts and audio (you can read and listen to them here) doesn’t address the fact that the administration still has not released all the information it has related to Epstein, who died in 2019 while being held on sex trafficking charges in what the medical examiner called a suicide.
According to the transcript, Maxwell said she “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. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.”
Maybe that’s true. Maybe it’s not. In any event, she offered her statements while seeking a pardon from the president, and she has an obvious incentive to say favorable things about the president.
In another line of questioning tailored to Trump’s personal interest, Blanche asked Maxwell about a book she compiled that was given to Epstein for his 50th birthday. The birthday book is of interest to Trump because he recently sued The Wall Street Journal for defamation after it published a story saying that the collection contained a “bawdy” letter bearing Trump’s name that, according to the Journal story:
contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly ‘Donald’ below her waist, mimicking pubic hair. Trump has denied writing the letter or drawing the picture, stating, “This is not me. This is a fake thing. It’s a fake Wall Street Journal story.” According to the Maxwell interview transcript, Blanche asked her, “Do you remember President Trump submitting a letter or a card or a note?” She replied, “I don’t.” After she met with Blanche, the government moved her to a minimum security facility. She currently has a petition pending before the Supreme Court to try to overturn her conviction and 20-year sentence. Maxwell’s lawyer issued a statement in response to the release, saying in part, “We are thankful to the Department of Justice and to Todd Blanche for making these tapes and transcripts public so that people can judge for themselves.”
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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