House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer claimed Tuesday that Ghislaine Maxwell, the sex trafficker and former Jeffrey Epstein associate, “exonerated” Donald Trump in her Department of Justice interview.
During testimony before the House Rules Committee the same day Comer’s committee published mostly old Epstein documents, Comer was asked about potentially holding a hearing on Maxwell’s transfer to a different—and some say cushier—prison after speaking with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in July. But Comer didn’t seem to be on board with it.
“You want to have a whole hearing, a whole entire hearing not about the victims, not about a government coverup, not about human trafficking, but about Maxwell, who you all were begging to be deposed, and I did the subpoena.” he told New Mexico Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez, a Democrat. “Now you’re mad because she exonerated Trump.”
Leger Fernandez replied, “The question wasn’t about should we do all these things, but this is something very specific that indeed, as I understand, the victims raised today their outrage that this has happened. And it is indeed a re-traumatization that someone who has done such horrible things is then treated favorably under these conditions.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House and Comer for comment.
In her multi-day interview with Blanche, Trump’s former personal attorney, Maxwell did not implicate the president in any nefarious activity. Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking, which is a pardonable offense. During the interview, she went out of her way to praise the president.
“Trump was always very cordial and very kind to me. And I just want to say that I find — I — I admire his extraordinary achievement in becoming the President now,” Maxwell said, according to the transcript. “I like him, and I’ve always liked him.”
Days later, Maxwell was moved from Florida to a minimum-security Texas prison with no cell blocks or guard towers—an upgrade, according to many.
“For her to be put up in what I would call it, a posh prison, a minimum security prison, is an insult,” said Sky Roberts, the brother of deceased Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre.
“President Trump himself stated that people that have sex-trafficked across borders should be held to the harshest penalties,” he told CNN last month. “And yet we‘re seeing the exact opposite right now in the sense that she‘s being transferred to a minimum security prison, which I‘ll just state as the ‘Real Housewives’ prison.”
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