The United States Department of Justice has released transcripts of a recent interview between Ghislaine Maxwell, the former partner of child sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein, and one of its top officials.
Their meeting was arranged in July as the administration of President Donald Trump struggled to tamp down scrutiny over his past ties to Epstein.
In transcripts released on Friday, Maxwell praised Trump and insisted that she never saw him engage in any inappropriate behaviour.
“I actually never saw the president in any type of massage setting,” said Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking convictions.
“I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way. The president was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.”
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the second-in-command at the Justice Department, previously said he met with Maxwell to see if she “has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims”.
But the release of the transcripts is likely to reignite questions about how the Justice Department has handled information about the Epstein case, which has become a source of speculation and conspiracy theories among Trump’s supporters.
On Friday, Blanche said that, excepting the names of the victims, “every word is included” in the released transcripts.
“Nothing removed. Nothing hidden,” he explained.
In the interview, Maxwell denied having any knowledge of a so-called “client list”, a subject of conspiracy theories on the US right.
She also complimented Trump for his behaviour and his “extraordinary achievement in becoming the president now”.
“Trump was always very cordial and very kind to me,” Maxwell said, adding, “I like him, and I’ve always liked him.”
Following her meeting with Blanche, which took place in a courthouse over two days, Maxwell was moved from a low-security federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security camp in Texas.
The government has not explained the reason for the change.
But in the aftermath of the meeting, the family of one of Epstein’s highest-profile accusers, Virginia Giuffre, called on the Trump administration not to show Maxwell any leniency.
“She must remain in prison — anything less would go down in history as being one of the highest travesties of justice,” Giuffre’s relatives wrote in a statement. Giuffre died by suicide in April.
Epstein himself was found dead in his jail cell in 2019, and his death was ruled a suicide by hanging.
Still, conspiracy theories have widely circulated in the US that his death could have been a cover-up, based on the belief that Epstein’s powerful associates may have taken part in his abuse.
Experts say the saga has become a stand-in for the suspicion that the rich and powerful face little accountability, and Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) base has long backed efforts to “drain the swamp”: a catchphrase used to advocate for the removal of corrupt forces in the government and leading industries.
Some of these suspicions have evolved into conspiracy theories about rings of paedophiles operating in the shadows of power.
In 2016, for instance, a suspect fired a gun into the Comet Ping Pong Pizzeria in Washington, DC, based on the belief it was a hub for such a ring.
In the Epstein case, there was widespread speculation that the disgraced financier kept a “client list” as blackmail against powerful figures.
Several members of the Trump administration had previously been strong promoters of that conspiracy theory, including Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel.
But he has since backtracked after joining the White House for Trump’s second term, with the FBI and Department of Justice issuing a joint memo that no such list exists. That memo also reaffirmed that Epstein died by suicide and no further suspects in his abuses have come to light.
The memo, however, failed to dampen interest in the scandal, and many pointed out that Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News in February that a client list was “on her desk” for review. Bondi has since said she misspoke and was referring to the Epstein files in general.
A Quinnipiac poll in July found that 63 percent of people in the US disapprove of Trump’s handling of the issue.
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