Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime companion Ghislaine Maxwell declined to answer lawmakers’ questions and invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during a deposition before the House Oversight Committee on Monday.
But her lawyer said she was “prepared to speak fully and honestly” if she was first granted clemency by President Donald Trump.
Maxwell, who was convicted on sex trafficking charges in 2021, was set to face the committee’s questioning via videoconference from the federal prison camp in Texas where she’s serving her 20-year sentence. Instead, lawmakers emerged from the closed-door session less than an hour after it began. They said Maxwell had declined to engage with their inquiries, citing her ongoing legal efforts to have her conviction overturned.
“This, obviously is very disappointing,” the committee’s chairman, Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky), told reporters afterward. “We had many questions to ask about the crimes she and Epstein committed, as well as questions about potential co-conspirators.”
Video of the deposition, released by the committee later Monday, showed Maxwell seated at a conference room table in a khaki prison jumpsuit. She repeatedly said she would like to answer lawmakers’ questions but was invoking her “right to silence.”
Her attorney, David Oscar Markus, said his client had no choice but to remain silent.
“If this committee and the American public truly want to hear the unfiltered truth about what happened, there is a straightforward path,” Markus told the committee’s members at the start of Monday’s session. He added that Maxwell would be willing to testify more fully if granted a pardon or commutation of her sentence.
“Only she can provide the complete account,” Markus said. “Some may not like what they hear, but the truth matters.”
The statement was the latest instance of Maxwell and Markus openly lobbying for Trump to end her prison term while also suggesting that, if he were to do so, she would provide testimony that would lift any lingering suspicions as to whether any onetime friends of Epstein’s, including Trump and former president Bill Clinton, had any connections to Epstein’s alleged crimes. Both men have denied any knowledge of Epstein’s wrongdoing.
Trump has indicated he is not considering a pardon or commutation for Maxwell. But he also has not ruled out doing so — even as furor over his administration’s handling of matters related to Epstein has fueled persistent controversy within his base and divided the Republican caucus in the House.
Maxwell’s request for presidential intervention Monday drew swift condemnation from some corners of the president’s party.
“No clemency and no mercy for child predators,” said Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Florida), a member of the Oversight Committee, in a social media post.
Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to two charges of soliciting prostitution, including one involving a minor. He was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges in 2019 and died in federal custody that year. His death was ruled a suicide.
Speculation has swirled for years since then that others in Epstein’s circle of rich and powerful friends may have played some role in his misdeeds, including by turning a blind eye. The Justice Department’s recent release of millions of pages of documents related to its investigations of Epstein have only fueled that conjecture but have provided no evidence conclusively implicating anyone in previously unknown crimes.
The department on Monday offered several lawmakers the opportunity to review unredacted versions of those records, a move required under the law passed last year that prompted their public release.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (Maryland), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, spent several hours reviewing those records in a department reading room. After emerging, he criticized Justice Department officials for failing to also send Congress a required explanation for the redactions in the versions of those documents released to the public.
“I think that the Department of Justice has been in a cover-up mode for many months and has been trying to sweep the entire thing under the rug,” Raskin said.
Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) and Ro Khanna (D-California), the sponsors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, said many of the files they saw Monday still had some names and other information withheld.
“Our bigger concern is that there’s still a lot that’s redacted, even in what we were seeing,” Khanna told reporters. “That’s because the documents produced to Justice from the FBI and the original grand juries were redacted when they got them.”
Comer’s committee had for months been seeking to depose Maxwell as one of nearly a dozen witnesses it has subpoenaed as part of its broader inquiry into Epstein. Clinton and his wife, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton are expected to testify in closed-door proceedings later this month.
After the committee first demanded Maxwell’s testimony in July, Markus indicated that she was willing to speak to lawmakers but could not answer their questions at the time, given a then-pending petition she’d filed asking the Supreme Court to take up her case.
The justices have since declined to consider Maxwell’s appeal, and she is currently pursuing another legal maneuver in the lower courts in hopes of undoing her conviction.
Lawmakers’ interest in her as a central figure in both Epstein’s misdeeds and his circle of celebrity friends has only grown since she was moved last summer from a federal prison in Florida to a low-security prison camp in Texas.
The transfer came after Maxwell sat for a two-day interview with the No. 2 official at the Justice Department, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, in which she repeatedly stated she had “never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way.”
Democrats have questioned whether her transfer was premised upon her willingness to sit for that interview. They condemned her refusal to answer their questions Monday as yet another instance of her seeking to leverage the situation to her benefit.
“She answered no questions and provided no information about the men who raped and trafficked women and girls,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (California), the committee’s top Democrat, in a statement. “Who is she protecting?”
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