The Justice Division on Friday launched transcripts of interviews its No. 2 official did with Jeffrey Epstein’s imprisoned former girlfriend because the Trump administration scrambles to current itself as clear amid a fierce backlash over an earlier refusal to reveal a trove of information from the sex-trafficking case.
The disclosure represents the newest Trump administration effort to restore self-inflicted political wounds after failing to ship on expectations that its personal officers had created via conspiracy theories and daring pronouncements that by no means got here to cross. By making public two days value of interviews, officers look like hoping to not less than quickly preserve at bay sustained anger from President Donald Trump’s base whilst they proceed to sit down on different proof they’d prompt was being ready for public launch.
Deputy Legal professional Basic Todd Blanche
“I may have met Donald Trump at that time, because my father was friendly with him and liked him very much,” Maxwell mentioned, in keeping with the transcript.
Maxwell mentioned her father was keen on Trump’s then-wife, Ivana, “because she was also from Czechoslovakia, where my dad was from.”
Maxwell, a onetime socialite who was convicted in 2021 of serving to lure teenage ladies to be sexually abused by Epstein, was interviewed over the course of two days final month by Deputy Legal professional Basic Todd Blanche at a Florida courthouse.
After her interview, Maxwell was moved from the low-security federal jail in Florida the place she had been serving a 20-year sentence to a minimal safety jail camp in Texas. Neither her lawyer nor the federal Bureau of Prisons have defined the explanation for the transfer.
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The Epstein case had lengthy captured public consideration partly due to the rich financer’s social connections through the years to distinguished figures together with Prince Andrew, former President Invoice Clinton and Trump, who has mentioned his relationship with Epstein ended years earlier than. Epstein was arrested in 2019 on sex-trafficking prices, accused of sexually abusing dozens of teenage ladies, and was discovered lifeless a month later in a New York jail cell in what investigators described as a suicide.
The saga has consumed the Trump administration over the past month following an abrupt two-page announcement from the FBI and Justice Division that Epstein had killed himself regardless of conspiracy theories on the contrary, {that a} “client list” that Legal professional Basic Pam Bondi had intimated was on her desk didn’t truly exist and that no extra paperwork from the high-profile investigation had been appropriate to be launched.
The announcement produced outrage from conspiracy theorists, on-line sleuths and Trump supporters who had been hoping to see proof of a authorities coverup, an expectation pushed partly by feedback from officers together with FBI Director Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, who on podcasts earlier than taking their present positions had repeatedly promoted the concept damaging particulars about distinguished individuals had been being withheld.
Patel, as an illustration, mentioned in not less than one podcast interview earlier than changing into director that Epstein’s “black book” was below the “direct control of the director of the FBI.” The administration had an early stumble in February when far-right influencers had been invited to the White Home in February and supplied by Bondi with binders marked “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” and “Declassified” that contained paperwork that had largely already been within the public area.
After the primary launch fell flat, Bondi mentioned officers had been poring over a “truckload” of beforehand withheld proof she mentioned had been handed over by the FBI and raised expectations of forthcoming releases.
