The Justice Department on Friday released transcripts of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s two-day interview with convicted sex trafficker and Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
The transcripts — which run for over 300 pages — came after Blanche traveled to Florida last month to meet with Maxwell, following pushback over the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein case’s fallout. The release of the transcripts came as the Justice Department also turned over thousands of pages of files in the Epstein case to the House Oversight Committee, which said it would publish, after child sexual abuse material and any information identifying victims is redacted.
The Justice Department also released audio recordings of the Blanche-Maxwell conversation.
At the outset, Blanche told Maxwell the interview was not part of a “cooperation deal.” He said that she had immunity during their conversations, meaning the government wouldn’t use anything she said against her, but he made no promises to ask the judge in Maxwell’s case for leniency. He did say that the government could prosecute her if she made false statements during the interview.
“By you meeting with us today, we’re really just meeting, I’m not promising to do anything,” he said.
What do the Maxwell-Blanche transcripts say?
Throughout the interviews, Blanche asked Maxwell about her relationship with Epstein and others in the late financier’s orbit. He also asked about some of the allegations made against her and Epstein, who died in federal custody in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence on charges that she helped Epstein recruit and abuse underage victims.
In some cases, the names of accusers appear to be redacted.
Maxwell said she may have first met President Trump in 1990. She said her father, British publishing magnate Robert Maxwell, was “friendly with him and liked him very much,” and he was fond of Mr. Trump’s ex-wive Ivana Trump.
Later in the interview, Blanche asked about Maxwell and Epstein’s relationships with famous people, including Mr. Trump. She said Mr. Trump “was always very cordial and very kind to me,” adding that “I admire his extraordinary achievement in becoming the President now.” She also said Mr. Trump and Epstein “seemed friendly,” but she “only ever saw them in social settings,” not private settings.
She said she “never witnessed the President in any inappropriate setting in any way.”
She also claimed she “can’t ever recollect” recruiting somebody from Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club to give Epstein a massage. Late Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre had alleged that Maxwell recruited her while she worked at Mar-a-Lago in the early 2000s. Mr. Trump told reporters last month he cut off ties with Epstein after he “stole” employees from Mar-a-Lago, including Giuffre.
She also spoke about former President Bill Clinton, whom she claimed was “my friend, not Epstein’s friend.” She noted that she attended Chelsea Clinton’s wedding with her then-boyfriend, Ted Waitte. She said she did not believe Clinton ever received a massage while the former president was with Epstein. And she told Blanche that Clinton flew on Epstein’s private plane, but did not visit Epstein’s private island.
Maxwell did not appear to accuse Clinton or Mr. Trump of inappropriate behavior.
Maxwell also appears to address Prince Andrew’s relationship with Epstein and a person whose name is redacted. From context, that person appears to be Giuffre, who alleged that Andrew sexually assaulted her as a minor after she traveled to London with Epstein. Andrew had denied the allegations, but settled a lawsuit brought by Giuffre out of court.
When asked about Andrew’s relationship with the accuser, she responds, “what’s an even bigger word than bullshit?” She claimed a famous photo showing Andrew with his arm around Giuffre as Maxwell smiles in the background was “fake.” She said “categorically” that she “never, at any time, set Andrew up to have relations with her or any other human being ever.”
Blanche asked her briefly about several other people whom she claimed to know, including Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Alan Dershowitz and now-Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., with whom she said she went “dinosaur bone hunting.”
Maxwell describes her relationship with Epstein
In 1991, Maxwell said she struck up a friendship with Epstein. Maxwell was asked by Blanche in detail about her sexual relationship with Epstein, which she says started in 1992. She told the deputy attorney general that it is a “misnomer” that she was with Epstein consistently as a partner, and that she did not know he had other girlfriends until the Epstein flight logs were released.
“Contemporaneously, I absolutely did not know,” about other women Epstein was with, Maxwell said, adding that by 1999, their relationship had “foundered.”
Maxwell told Blanche that despite their physical relationship ending, she was still being paid by the disgraced financier, and that the two occasionally shared a bed together as “friends with benefits, if you will, just not sex.”
Maxwell said at first she was paid $25,000 a year to work for Epstein, starting in 1992, and by the end of the payments in 2009, she was being paid $250,000 per year. Between 2010 and Epstein’s 2019 death, Maxwell said her relationship with him was “almost nonexistent,” though she acknowledges they exchanged occasional phone calls and emails.
She acknowledged to Blanche that she helped Epstein find people to give him massages at home — but she said she met them in “legitimate spas” and did not believe any of the people she found were under the age of 18. She also claimed it “never would cross my mind” that those people were asked to perform sexual favors for Epstein.
At other points, Blanche asked Maxwell about Epstein’s career on Wall Street — a persistent focus of speculation. She noted former Victoria’s Secret CEO Lex Wexner was “one very famous” financial client of Epstein’s, and said former JPMorgan Chase banker Jes Staley was “business partners” with Epstein. But she said she was “not part of Epstein’s business world, except tangentially.”
Maxwell addresses Epstein’s case — and death
Maxwell told Blanche there is “no list,” referring to the conspiracy theory that Epstein maintained a black book of clients who engaged in sexual activity with minors on his properties.
She speculated that she does not believe that Epstein died by suicide in jail, but she also doesn’t think anybody on the outside caused him to be killed. She noted that, in the prison where she served at the time, “somebody can pay a prisoner to kill you for $25 worth of commissary” (she was moved to a lower-security facility following the interview).
“If it is indeed murder, I believe it was an internal situation,” Maxwell said, adding that she does “not have any reason to believe that” he was killed to cover up information Epstein had.
“I also think it’s ludicrous, because if that — I also happen to think if that is what they wanted, they would’ve had plenty of opportunity when he wasn’t in jail. And if they were worried about blackmail or anything from him, he would’ve been a very easy target,” Maxwell said.
Maxwell said law enforcement did not contact her during an initial investigation into Epstein in Florida in the 2000s, and she didn’t discuss the case with Epstein. That probe controversially ended with federal authorities in Miami agreeing not to prosecute him, in exchange for Epstein pleading guilty to prostitution in state court. That deal is now key to Maxwell’s efforts to appeal her criminal conviction, as she claims she’s covered by a clause in the non-prosecution agreement that covers “any potential co-conspirators.”
Maxwell’s attorney David Oscar Markus thanked the Trump administration for releasing the transcripts in a statement posted to X. He also insisted that Maxwell is innocent.
“Ms. Maxwell answered every question. She did not refuse to respond and did not dodge any question. She supported her answers with documents and other objective evidence. Her demeanor and credibility are clear for anyone to hear,” Markus wrote.
Read the Ghislaine Maxwell interview transcripts
Sara Cook and
Nick Kurtz
contributed to this report.
Joe Walsh is a senior editor for digital politics at CBS News. Joe previously covered breaking news for Forbes and local news in Boston.
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