The disclosure this Wednesday of three private emails in which Jeffrey Epstein implied that Donald Trump knew of his crimes was not the only time the millionaire pedophile’s case has been the subject of news from Capitol Hill. According to a document obtained by Democrats from the House Judiciary Committee, Ghislaine Maxwell, the financier’s ex-partner and best friend, is maneuvering to get pardoned by Trump. Maxwell is also the recipient of one of these new ones email, in which Epstein tells him that one of his victims “spent hours” with Trump in one of the financier’s homes.
If the US president accepts a pardon, which he has not ruled out when asked several times in recent months, the sentence of Maxwell, who is serving 20 years in prison for his role in Epstein’s sex trafficking ring, could be significantly reduced.
The document, which reached the Democrats through a trusted source, is a message from the inmate to her lawyer, Leah Saffian, in which she talks about her intention to send the documentation through the warden of the minimum security prison in Texas where she is serving her sentence. He lives there after being transferred, ordered in August by the Justice Department, from a Florida penitentiary, where prison conditions were more severe.
The move came after Maxwell met for nine hours on two separate days with Todd Blanche, Trump’s deputy attorney general and former lawyer. Full details of the conversation were not revealed at the time, other than the fact that Blanche compiled a list of around a hundred names and saw her questions answered “candidly”. Democrats link the “preferential treatment” he has since received to some kind of deal with the Trump administration.
In the message sent to his lawyer and revealed this week, the sender complains about the paperwork: “It’s difficult for me to organize everything, it’s very extensive and has many attachments,” writes Epstein’s recruiter. Member of British high society (she is the daughter of media magnate Robert Maxwell), she met the financier in New York in the nineties and was his inseparable companion until 2019, the year in which he died in a maximum security cell in Manhattan in strange circumstances and amidst the shortcomings of the surveillance of the agents entrusted to her. Then Epstein was waiting to be tried for a network of trafficking and sexual abuse of hundreds of minors.
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt responded in an early afternoon press appearance in Washington when asked whether Trump was considering a pardon for Maxwell. “It’s not something I’m talking about, or thinking about, right now,” he responded. “I can assure you of that.”
The Supreme Court recently rejected an appeal by Maxwell against the 20-year prison sentence he received in 2022 for providing victims for Epstein and also for participating in some of his crimes. With that path to freedom ruled out, grace is now his only option.
Maxwell also requested immunity to testify before a House of Representatives committee at a hearing originally scheduled for September 11, which was postponed to the 29th of that month and was never held, due to the government shutdown, which this Wednesday was nearing its end on its forty-third day.
In a letter to Trump, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, noted that Trump had also received information from a confidant that Maxwell receives preferential treatment in prison. “They cook her special food, which is prepared by prison staff,” Raskin wrote, adding that she is allowed to bring a computer with her and that the warden allowed her to serve “refreshments for his guests.”
