The Trump administration is considering publicly releasing the transcript of a Justice Department official’s two-day interview with Ghislaine Maxwell last month, a source familiar with the matter told NBC News on Tuesday.
“We’re leaning toward transparency,” the source said.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche met with Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirator and confidant, for nine hours of interviews over two days in July. Former prosecutors told NBC News last month that it was highly unusual for the Justice Department’s second-in-command to personally interview a witness.
Blanche made no public statements about what Maxwell said or what would come next in the Epstein investigation. Days later, Maxwell was transferred from a Florida prison to a minimum-security prison in Texas where the majority of inmates are serving time for nonviolent offenses and white-collar crimes.
Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence for her role in recruiting and trafficking minors for sex.
The Bureau of Prison’s own designation would have made Maxwell ineligible for the transfer, as BOP policy mandates that convicted sex offenders must be held in at least a low-security-level facility. The only work-around to the rule is if the bureau’s Designation and Sentence Computation Center issues a waiver.
Epstein survivors and their families have blasted the transfer, calling it “preferential treatment.” Former BOP officials have similarly derided the move, with a former official calling it “a travesty of justice.”
Maxwell has been in the spotlight amid fallout from the Trump administration’s handling of files related to Epstein, the convicted sex offender who died in prison in 2019 awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.
Members of President Donald Trump’s base, as well as some Cabinet members, have long advocated for the release of the files, with some promoting conspiracy theories around Epstein’s death. Trump vowed on the campaign trail last year to release the files if he were elected.
The issue became a source of division between Trump and his MAGA base after the Justice Department said last month that it would not release any more files related to the case.
Trump has at times dismissed the importance of the issue, but he recently directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to seek the release of pertinent grand jury testimony. The order came after The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump sent Epstein a “bawdy” birthday card in 2003. Trump later sued the newspaper.
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