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.
She also addressed her relationship with former President Bill Clinton, whom she claimed was “my friend, not Epstein’s friend.” She did not appear to accuse Clinton or Mr. Trump of inappropriate behavior.
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.
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, saying that “it’s possible,” but that it is possible he was killed by another inmate.
“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’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
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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