The Justice Department released hours of interviews between a top federal prosecutor and Ghislaine Maxwell, the only person convicted of or held civilly liable for a role in Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche sat down with Maxwell in a federal prison in Tallahassee, where she was being held until recently. The terms of the interview granted her limited immunity from further prosecution – unless she told lies.
She said she never witnessed President Donald Trump doing anything “inappropriate with anybody” and shot down claims that former President Bill Clinton had traveled to Epstein’s infamous island in the U.S. Virgin Islands and said the Clintons were her friends – not Epstein’s.
“I do believe that Epstein did a lot of, not all, but some of what he’s accused of, and I’m not here to defend him in any respect whatsoever,” Maxwell told Blanche. “I don’t want to, and I don’t think he requires, nor deserves any type of protection or — from me in any way, to sugarcoat what he did or didn’t do”
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT WEIGHS RELEASE OF GHISLAINE MAXWELL INTERVIEW
EPSTEIN, MAXWELL GRAND JURIES RELIED ON TWO LAW ENFORCEMENT WITNESSES, DOJ FILING REVEALS
Authorities published hundreds of pages of transcripts as well as audio recordings of the interview on the DOJ website.
Maxwell denied Epstein had a “client list” and said he did not maintain a stockpile of blackmail material against prominent associates.Â
Maxwell also attempted to explain what she believes is the origin of claims that Epstein kept the “list.”
In 2009, she said Epstein had finished a slap-on-the-wrist sentence for child sex trafficking, but civil suits were pouring in, some from the law firm Rothstein Adler. A lawyer there called the FBI to say he ha a “piece of evidence” that belongs to Epstein, she said. That was “the list,” she said, adding that she believes he became a confidential informant to the FBI.
She said he obtained the list through a sting operation involving Epstein’s former butler, who said in a deposition he had “handwritten notes, or a journal, whatever,” according to Maxwell.
Rothstein Adler was later raided by the FBI. Lawyers at the firm were prosecuted in connection with a number of alleged crimes, including money laundering, fraud, conspiracy, and a Ponzi scheme.
“This is one man,” Maxwell said. “He’s not some — they’ve made him into this. He’s not that interesting. He’s a disgusting guy who did terrible things to young kids.”
She reiterated past statements that she does not believe he killed himself, and she revealed Epstein told her he had a heart condition that prevented him from having normal sexual intercourse.Â
She said she met Epstein in the early 1990s and began working for him. She said their own sexual relationship stopped in 1999.
In one exchange, she told Blanche that she had grown to believe that Epstein wasn’t very into her.
“There was some indications that he would actively tell other people to lie to me or conceal things from me, and that he never loved me, and I wasn’t his type,” she said.
In the mid-to-late ‘90s, she said, Epstein began traveling increasingly with “masseuses.” According to Epstein’s accusers, he used massages as cover for sex.
“In the early ’90s, I don’t remember traveling so much with other people,” she said. “There would be a masseuse or a yoga person, but now he started to travel with more, always a masseuse.”
Also around that time, he began a testosterone dosage, she said.
“He started doing testosterone, and that altered his character,” she told Blanche. “And I believe that started in the late ’90s. And I believe that the FBI has his medical records and you may see that on his medical records.”
In a statement on Twitter, Maxwell’s attorney David Oscar Markus alleged that she had only been convicted because the DOJ needed a scapegoat after Epstein died in jail before his case went to trial.
“Ghislaine Maxwell is innocent and never should have been tried, much less convicted, in this case,” Markus wrote. “She never committed or participated in sexual abuse against minors, or anyone else for that matter.”
Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence after she was convicted at trial in 2021 of helping Epstein traffic teen girls.
She has an ongoing appeal and has signaled that she is willing to sit for interviews with both federal prosecutors and Congress.
Epstein died in a federal jail cell in 2019 before he faced trial himself. His official cause of death has been ruled a suicide, a conclusion rejected by his brother.
The release came with little warning, days after federal judges denied the DOJ’s requests to unseal of grand jury materials from both Maxwell and Epstein’s criminal cases.
This is a breaking news story. Stick with Fox News Digital for updates.
Fox News’ Sarah Rumpf-Whitten, Jasmine Baehr and Adam Sabes contributed to this report.
