Er …. doesn’t the offer itself vindicate Donald Trump? Or if one wants to look at this from the other direction, what value would Ghislaine Maxwell’s testimony have for Trump if it’s entirely transactional?
The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed Maxwell to testify in their investigation into the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, a finale of sorts to the political games of both parties around his and Maxwell’s predation and sexual exploitation of underage girls. Maxwell refused to testify without an immunity deal and ended up invoking her Fifth Amendment rights to refuse to testify:
Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein, declined to answer questions from Congress, invoking her right against self-incrimination.
Maxwell had been subpoenaed to testify Monday before the House Oversight Committee, which is investigating the government’s handling of the Epstein case. The British socialite was convicted in 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence for helping recruit and groom underage girls. She joined Monday morning’s closed-door deposition virtually from prison.
“She answered no questions and provided no information,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D., Calif.), the top Democrat on the committee.
That hardly comes as a surprise. Maxwell and her attorneys want the immunity deal, in case her latest habeas petition pays off and forces some kind of retrial. The release of the Epstein files also raises the possibility of new prosecutions, as do the Oversight hearings, although the likelihood of new indictments seems rather small at the moment. Mostly, though, Maxwell wants more concessions than she got in the last round of negotiations over depositions, where Maxwell managed to get a transfer to a low-security federal facility in Texas from the medium-security prison in New Jersey to which she was first assigned.
This time, she’s playing for keeps, and hoping Trump is desperate enough to play along:
Ghislaine Maxwell, who was sentenced to prison for 20 years for conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein to abuse minors, sent a clear message to Donald Trump on Monday that if the president were to grant her clemency, she would clear his name of any wrongdoing as it pertains to Epstein.
The extraordinary overture, stated by Maxwell’s lawyer Monday morning during her virtual deposition before the House Oversight Committee, ensures the Epstein saga will continue to remain a political hotspot.
Markus also said that: “Ms. Maxwell alone can explain why, and the public is entitled to that explanation.”
This offer comes about six months too late, and arguably two years too late. Trump has three potential areas of liability with the Epstein scandal: legal, financial, and political. The full release of the Epstein files now makes clear why Trump never faced legal action, either criminal or civil, in this scandal; he never had a personal connection to Epstein that left him liable.
The political liabilities may not have as clean a resolution, but the risks for Trump have evaporated. His biggest risk would have been while running for another term, but the Biden DoJ never had a hook on which to hang the Epstein scandal around his neck, except for socializing in the same circles until 2003. Now that the files have been released, Trump has even less to worry about politically. Maxwell doesn’t have any real leverage any longer.
Offering to clear Clinton and Trump at the same time is a clever play by Markus. He clearly understands that a commutation from Trump in exchange for an “exoneration” of him alone is politically worthless, so Markus wants to remove the self-interest from the equation that would negate the value of the offer. The problem for Maxwell is that Clinton does appear in the Epstein files, in the Tubba Bubba hot-tub picture with a young female whose face has been redacted. That may be completely benign, but it also should remind Trump that he won’t want to put himself in the same position as Bill Clinton.
Finally, even if the Epstein files do not reveal a vast sex-trafficking network among the moneyed elite, there is no question that Maxwell trafficked underage girls to Jeffrey Epstein. She got convicted of it at trial and got the appropriate sentence for it. Issuing a clemency action would remove the only accountability for these crimes still possible, and it would attach Trump to the scandal in a way that would be entirely unnecessary. Nothing Maxwell has to say has any value to Trump, and her continued incarceration does him far more good than any testimony she may give.
Editor’s Note: The mainstream media isn’t interested in the facts; they’re only interested in attacking the president. Help us continue to get to the bottom of stories like the Jeffrey Epstein files by supporting our truth-seeking journalism today.
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