President Donald Trump on Friday refused to rule out the possibility that he could grant clemency to Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence for helping her ex-boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein sexually exploit and traffic underage girls.
Trump was asked twice about whether he would pardon Maxwell—whom he used to party with—and both times, he refused to answer.
“It’s something I haven’t thought about,” Trump said to the first reporter who asked Trump about possibly granting clemency to Maxwell. “I’m allowed to do it, but it’s something I have not thought about.”
Trump was then asked again before he got into Marine One for a taxpayer-funded trip to two Trump-branded golf courses in Scotland.
“Would you consider a pardon or clemency for Ghislaine Maxwell?” a reporter asked Trump.
“I don’t want to talk about that,” Trump said, going on to bring up other men who have been tied to Epstein, including former President Bill Clinton.
Trump’s refusal to rule out clemency for Maxwell comes as Todd Blanche—Trump’s former criminal defense attorney who now serves as deputy attorney general—is interviewing Maxwell for a second day about whether she has incriminating information about Epstein’s alleged clients.
But as Daily Kos reported, the interview is a sham and should be taken with a grain of salt.
Maxwell has ample reason to lie and tell Trump what he wants to hear in order to butter him up for a pardon. And Blanche likely has Trump’s interest at heart when questioning Maxwell, rather than the truth.
Trump was asked about the Maxwell interview on Friday, but he tried to distract from that interview by pushing the baseless lie he’s crafted and ordered other Republicans to parrot about former President Barack Obama committing “treason.”
“People should really focus on how well the country is doing, or they should focus on the fact that Barack Hussein Obama led a coup,” Trump said.
But ultimately, Trump refusing to rule out a pardon for Maxwell is unlikely to quell the Epstein-files mania that is consuming Trump’s presidency. In fact, it will likely only increase the public’s dissatisfaction with how the Trump administration is handling the Epstein case, as well as the belief that Trump is hiding something by not releasing the files. After all, Trump was reportedly told by his top aides that he appears multiple times in the files.
“Thousands of FBI agents from NY’s Field Office were pulled from terrorism, drug, and gang cases to work 12-hour days combing through and redacting info from the Epstein files. After all that there’s nothing to share with the public? Even Trump loyalists know it’s a cover-up,” Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman of New York said Thursday night on MSNBC, referring to the MAGA outrage over Trump’s Epstein files response.