President Donald Trump’s Jeffrey Epstein problem has come roaring back. On Wednesday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released a new set of emails obtained from the Epstein estate. In one of the emails, the late convicted sex offender wrote to confidante and convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell that Trump had “spent hours” at Epstein’s house with one of his victims.
Even before the latest email releases — which the White House denounced as “selectively released” to “smear” the president — Trump faced additional thorny problems tied to Maxwell and Epstein. New reports of Maxwell’s relaxed prison conditions raise even more questions of a potential quid pro quo with the Trump administration. And to top everything off, Maxwell wants the president to commute her sentence.
This alleged special treatment only raises more questions about how Maxwell has been able to secure it — and whether she’s expected to offer anything in return.
In July, the House Oversight Committee voted to subpoena Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for helping Epstein prey sexually on children and young women, for a deposition. Just days later, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche swooped in to interview Maxwell in prison over the course of two days.
Maxwell said in her interview with Blanche that she never saw Trump behave inappropriately. Shortly after the interview, her lot in life improved significantly, as MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian explains:
After the interview, she was transferred from a low-security prison in Florida to a minimum-security federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas. The Federal Bureau of Prisons has not explained the transfer, which MSNBC and other outlets reported deviated from a policy that generally forbids sex offenders from serving in prison camps. Days after her arrival, she said in emails to friends and relatives that she was much happier at the less-restrictive facility.
The timing of Blanche’s interview combined with Maxwell’s exceptional transfer reeks of a potential quid pro quo. (A senior administration official told NBC News in August, “Any false assertion this individual was given preferential treatment is absurd.”) New details of special treatment in her new prison camp only strengthen suspicions of an arrangement.
Dilanian reported on Monday that Maxwell is “being waited on ‘hand and foot’ by the staff at her minimum-security prison camp while she prepares a request that President Trump commute her sentence, according to whistleblower revelations made public on Monday by House Democrats.”
Maxwell has “received customized meals personally delivered to her cell, after-hours time in a private exercise area and access to a service puppy,” according to a letter to Trump from Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. “The deference and servility to Ms. Maxwell have reached such preposterous levels that one of the top officials at the facility has complained that he is ‘sick of having to be Maxwell’s bitch,’” Raskin wrote in the letter. This alleged special treatment only raises more questions about how Maxwell has been able to secure it — and whether she’s expected to offer anything in return. As the latest Epstein emails capture the headlines, the softening treatment of Maxwell will continue to be a liability for Trump. And then there’s the question of whether the president will seek to grant her request to have her sentence commuted. In July, Maxwell said she would not testify before Congress without immunity and requested clemency. According to NBC News, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the White House “does not comment on potential clemency requests. As President Trump has stated, pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell is not something he has thought about.” Trump could, theoretically, use a commutation — or a promise of one — of Maxwell’s sentence to try to extract more exculpatory (or seemingly exculpatory) testimony from her as he endures a rare firestorm of controversy that splits his own base. But if Trump did grant the commutation, it would also only add to the questions about whether Trump is trying to bury any evidence about his ties to Epstein after their falling out. The president, in short, has no good options.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. Previously, he worked at Vox, HuffPost and Politico, and he has also been published in, among other places, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, and The Intercept. You can sign up for his free politics newsletter by clicking the link at the top of this bio. 
