Ghislaine Maxwell is still weighing whether she will testify before Congress even though the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed her to do so.
Earlier this week, the powerful Oversight panel subpoenaed Maxwell for a deposition on Aug. 11 due to the “immense public interest and scrutiny” surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein case.
“Congress has asked her to testify, we have to make a decision about whether she will do that or not,” her attorney David Oscar Markus told reporters Friday.
“We haven’t gotten back to them on whether we’ll do that.”
The statement signals Maxwell is still mulling whether to plead the Fifth Amendment or other privileges to fend off the subpoena. Should she take the Fifth, the Oversight panel could offer her some type of immunity in a bid to get her to talk.
On Thursday and Friday, Maxwell spoke with US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, President Trump’s former defense attorney, about the Epstein case.
The unusual meeting between Maxwell and Blanche for a type of interview that is typically left for lower-level Justice Department officials comes amid a public firestorm over the infamous pedophile, who committed suicide in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019.
Maxwell, a British socialite, was found guilty in 2021 of child sex trafficking and engaging in a scheme to exploit minors with Epstein and sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in prison.
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Markus, who previously did a podcast episode with Blanche before the latter became the US deputy attorney general, said he was proud of his client’s performance when asked if the interview altered the calculus of whether she would comply with the Oversight Committee’s subpoena.
“I think Ghislaine did a wonderful job. She literally answered every question. She didn’t say that ‘I’m not going to talk about this person,’ ” Markus said.
“She was asked maybe about 100 different people. She answered questions about everybody, and she didn’t hold anything back.”
Markus also claimed “there have been no asks and no promises” made to get her to agree to the interview with Blanche, including the possibility of a pardon from Trump.
Earlier Friday, Trump said he hasn’t yet contemplated a pardon, but noted, “I’m allowed to do it.”
Maxwell is currently serving out her sentence, something that her legal team has been appealing all the way up to the Supreme Court.
Former Epstein attorney Alan Dershowitz has publicly claimed Maxwell “knows everything” about the convicted child sex offender’s crimes.
The Trump administration and Republicans have come under intense pressure from the MAGA base to give the public more answers about Epstein.
The push for information comes after a July 6 memo from the DOJ and FBI memo said there was insufficient evidence to suggest Epstein even had an “incriminating client list.”
Democrats have sought to exploit the Epstein scandal and put Republicans on the spot with attempts to force a vote to publicly divulge the documents on the notorious sex predator.
Those efforts resulted in the floor of the House of Representatives effectively becoming frozen due to GOP leadership’s efforts to scuttle a Democratic effort to force a vote on Epstein.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and his deputies have been keen to stick with Trump on the Epstein controversy.
As a result, Republican leadership decided to send the lower chamber home for the August recess a day early.
“We want full transparency,” Johnson (R-La.) told CBS News’ “The Takeout with Major Garrett” Wednesday. “We want everybody who is involved in any way with the Epstein evils — let’s call it what it was — to be brought to justice as quickly as possible.”
“We want the full weight of the law on their heads.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) have cooked up a discharge petition, which will allow them to get a vote without GOP leadership’s blessing, on a bill to force the release of the Epstein files.
That discharge petition is poised to ripen when the House reconvenes in September from the August recess.
Trump has expressed support for additional public disclosures in what he has dubbed the “Epstein hoax” and backed a push by US Attorney General Pam Bondi to pursue court approval for releasing grand jury testimony.
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