House Speaker Mike Johnson gave a much firmer answer on whether child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell should receive a presidential pardon than Donald Trump has managed to muster.
“I would never even consider it,” Johnson told Piers Morgan Uncensored. “I mean, she’s a convicted human trafficker. She was a party to this, she set it up. By her own admission she was involved in all this. There’s no way she should ever leave prison.”
Johnson was pressed about Maxwell, the former girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, as questions reignited over whether Trump might be considering pardoning the British socialite, who is serving a 20-year sentence for helping Epstein abuse young girls around the world.
The Supreme Court rejected Maxwell’s appeal to have her conviction overturned on Monday, leaving a presidential pardon for her federal crimes as her only remaining hope of release.
That same day, Trump gave a vague response when asked by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins whether he would consider pardoning Maxwell, 63, following the failure of her appeal.
“I haven’t heard the name in so long. I can say this, that I’d have to take a look at it,” Trump said. “I wouldn’t consider it or not consider it—I don’t know anything about it. But I will speak to the DOJ.”
Sky Roberts, the brother of Epstein trafficking victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who took her own life in April, lashed out at Trump for failing to immediately rule out a pardon for Maxwell.
“It’s hurtful for a lot of survivors out there. It’s hurtful for me, as a family member, to even hear the potential for a pardon,” Roberts told MSNBC. “I mean, why is this even a conversation?”
There were concerns that Trump, who was friends with Epstein for years, was weighing a pardon for Maxwell in exchange for her testimony to the Department of Justice about Epstein’s crimes.
Maxwell sat for two days of questioning with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal defense lawyer, in July. During those talks, Maxwell claimed she never saw Trump behave “inappropriately with anybody” or be involved in any type of “massage setting” around Epstein or his young victims.
Epstein died by suicide in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial.
After speaking with Blanche, Maxwell was transferred from a strict federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida, to a minimum-security prison camp closer to her family in Bryan, Texas.
Elsewhere in his Piers Morgan Uncensored interview, Johnson said Congress is working to release all of the so-called Epstein files amid a MAGA uproar alleging a coverup to protect those named in the documents, including Trump.
“They’re in the process of being released. The House Oversight Committee is on this like white on rice, as we say down in Louisiana,” Johnson said.
“The one caveat is that we have a responsibility and a duty to protect the innocent victims. By some estimates, there may be 1,000 young women who were subjected to these horrific, unspeakable crimes at the hands of Epstein and his accomplices. We want to make sure their identities are protected, so those files have to be properly redacted to ensure they don’t suffer more harm,” he added.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
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