Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Tuesday that it’s an “impossible question” whether Ghislaine Maxwell — who was convicted of trafficking scores of young girls to Jeffrey Epstein for sexual abuse — is a “credible” witness in her denials of involvement in Epstein’s crimes.
“It’s an impossible question to answer,” Blanche said in his first on-record statements regarding his two-day July sit-down with Maxwell, after the Justice Department released transcripts from their meeting last month.
“I met with her for two days. To determine whether a witness is credible takes weeks and weeks and weeks,” Blanche said on CNN Tuesday night.
Blanche said during his interview that “it’s really up to the American people to determine what they believe that her answers were credible or whether they found her not credible.”
Maxwell was indicted in July 2020, during the first Trump administration. Her trial occurred in late 2021, while former President Joe Biden was in the White House.
Federal prosecutors had previously charged Maxwell with perjury for alleged lies she told during a 2016 civil deposition in which they said she lied about never recruiting anyone underage to massage Epstein and never witnessing or participating in any criminal acts, denials she largely repeated in her interview with Blanche.
The perjury counts against her were eventually dropped after her conviction on the more serious charges.
“I asked her questions that — that I believe all of us wanted answered and she answered them,” Blanche said. “She answered them. I didn’t — the point of the interview was not for me to pressure test every single answer she gave, of course not. The point of the interview was to allow her to speak, which nobody had done before.”
The government had previously argued Maxwell should be afforded no credibility during her criminal case, citing her “willingness to lie brazenly under oath about her conduct,” according to court records. Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence in connection with her conviction.
Blanche appeared to sympathize with Maxwell, saying she “had been in prison for many, many years, and she had offered to speak on many, many occasions. And she was never given that opportunity.”
“What I did is I gave her that opportunity to speak,” Blanche said. “It was recorded. My questions were there and whether — whether her answers were credible or truthful, there’s a lot of information out there about — about Mr. Epstein, about her and whether what she said is completely wrong or completely right or a little of both, is for that’s the reason why — why we released the transcript.”
Blanche then added, “It’s really up to the American people to determine what they believe that her answers were credible or whether they found her not credible.”
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