Ghislaine Maxwell says President Trump never did anything improper in her presence.

 

Ghislaine Maxwell mugshot. Government photo. 

Ghislaine Maxwell says President Trump never did anything improper in her presence. ABC News. Maxwell, who was Jeffrey Epstein's girlfriend and was convicted of sex trafficking, made the comments to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. A recording was made of the interview and the Trump administration is considering releasing it. Maxwell has been moved to a less secure prison and is appealing her conviction to the Supreme Court. Trump said he didn't have personal knowledge of the move and what happened during the meeting, but he said he wants documents to be released, as long as they don't harm innocent people. 

My Comment:

This is even more evidence that Trump's involvement with the Epstein scandal is benign. To review, Trump banned Epstein from Mar-A-Lago back in 2007, long before any of Jeffrey Epstein's criminality was known. They had a falling out even before that and Trump hadn't had any contact with Epstein since 2004. And Trump kicked Epstein out of his club for harassing a member's daughter.

President Trump also helped with the investigations against Jeffrey Epstein. Trump was helpful to the police and may have helped Epstein get his first conviction. He also was a willing interview subject for some of Epstein's victims. And there have been no credible releases of information from any of the Epstein trials or documents that implicates Trump in any way. 

Of course none of this will matter to the folks that are still pushing this story. Folks do seem to have moved on but there are a lot of folks out there that still insist that Trump is protecting himself. In a way that might be true, Trump knows from bitter experience that merely being associated with Epstein is damaging and he doesn't want anyone else innocent to have to go through the same thing. But given that Trump has already released many documents and even helped put Epstein away, the idea that he is covering for anything is ridiculous. 

I am guessing their objection will be that Maxwell was bribed with the better prison that she was transferred to. There might be some truth to that, cooperation with the government often has perks, but that doesn't mean she is lying here. Indeed, I figured that if a lie was coming it would be against Trump, do to extreme pressure against her to make something up. But I doubt that a Deputy Attorney General would risk his career to get Maxwell to lie about Trump if Trump was truly guilty and, like I said, all the evidence shows that Trump was never involved in the scandal. 

The Epstein scandal was never really about Trump though, it was about a powerful man who had powerful friends that got away with his crimes because of those friends. Was he running a blackmail operation? We won't ever know, because local police and the FBI botched the original investigation. Epstein was able to destroy much of the evidence long before the FBI raided his place, so if he was blackmailing people, we probably won't ever know it. We do know that Epstein was a pimp and he's been credibly accused of trafficking someone to Prince Andrew, at the very least. And there are a few other people that they could have gotten convictions on, but unfortunately, Bill Richardson, Jean-Luc Brunel and Marvin Minsky are all dead. And even then, conviction was no sure thing. 

It does raise the question why the Deputy Attorney General is even talking to Maxwell. Like I said, most of the players in this scandal are dead, other than Prince Andrew, and I can't ever see him making a perp walk. Perhaps if Maxwell would testify against him, along with surviving witness Johanna Sjoberg, they could get an arrest, but even then, I don't see how a conviction would happen, and not just because he's a Prince. The evidence of wrongdoing isn't super strong now that Virginia Giuffre is dead and even then, we might be well past the point of the Statute of Limitations running out. Indeed, Maxwell is the only person that has been convicted in the case and I don't know if I want to make a deal with her, given that after Epstein she was the 2nd worst person involved in this case. 

I do think that this entire thing was an own-goal by the Trump administration. Trump didn't have to release anything and if he had done that some people might have been annoyed but the story wouldn't still be in the news. Instead, they hyped it up, failed to deliver and then kept the story in the news for a lot longer than it should be. Indeed, though I do think that this interview, when released, will continue to exonerate Trump, it has the added effect of bringing the story back into the news. And it's not like Maxwell will be listened to regardless. Folks just hate Trump and that's the only reason this is still a story.