Sean Spicer, Donald Trump’s former White House press secretary, said he worries that the president will pardon Ghislaine Maxwell if he is “misled” by his own team.
Appearing on 2WAY’s podcast The Morning Meeting, Spicer predicted that Trump would face huge “outrage” if he grants clemency to the conspirator in Jeffrey Epstein’s underage sex trafficking.
However, Spicer believes that Trump would only do that if his aides convince him that it will be politically advantageous.
“Anyone who sells him on this is lying to him,” said Spicer, who was Trump’s chief spokesperson from his first inauguration in 2017 until he quit the job six months later.
Spicer compared the move to Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey after he led an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“I think this is very akin to Comey, right?” Spicer said. “When he fired Comey he was told, ‘Oh, if you fire Comey, everyone’s gonna cheer you on.’”
The decision to axe Comey ended up being enormously controversial.
“I think people misled him on how that was going to go down,” Spicer said. “I think this is similar. There will be outrage, like never before, if she gets a deal.”
“I hope to God nobody in the White House has led him to believe that that’s the case, that that would be a smart move,” Spicer added.
Trump is in the midst of a crisis over Epstein that erupted when his administration announced that government files on the convicted sex offender contained no evidence of a “client list” or that he was murdered.
In an effort to quell the outcry, Trump’s Justice Department—including Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer—met with Maxwell last month.
Maxwell’s legal team has made it clear that she is seeking a pardon for her cooperation with the Trump administration. Trump has said that he has not given thought to the prospect but observed that he’s “allowed to do it.”
Last week, Maxwell was moved from her prison in Tallahassee to a lower security prison camp in Bryan, Texas, in an apparent sweetheart deal.
The move also brings Maxwell closer to her family, as her sister Christine owns an apartment in Dallas, a three-hour drive from the new prison.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, Trump was a friend of Epstein, who died in his prison cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide.
Trump was repeatedly photographed alongside Epstein and Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for helping to facilitate the sex trafficking.
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