Epstein Case: US Justice Department Releases Recent Interview with Ghislaine Maxwell

The US Department of Justice released on Friday, August 22, the transcript and audiotape of a recent interview with Ghislaine Maxwell , an accomplice of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein , as Donald Trump's government faces accusations of a lack of transparency in the case.

"With the exception of the victims' names, every word is included. Nothing has been removed. Nothing has been withheld," said Todd Blanche, the senior Justice Department official who conducted the interview in late July with Ghislaine Maxwell, now in a Texas prison.

James Comer, an influential Republican congressman, also announced at the same time that the Justice Department had provided "thousands of pages of documents related to Epstein" to a House committee that had requested them. However, the congressman did not disclose the contents of these documents.

Donald Trump is taking multiple initiatives to try to extinguish the controversy surrounding the Epstein affair , which has inflamed the United States, even among his electoral base. The Republican government is accused of lacking transparency in the case of this financier who was found hanged in prison in New York in 2019 before his trial for sex crimes.

His death has fueled countless conspiracy theories , according to which he was assassinated to prevent embarrassing revelations about high-profile figures.

After months of promising his supporters sensational revelations in this affair, the American president has suffered a backlash since his government announced in early July that it had discovered no new evidence that would justify the publication of additional documents.

Ghislaine Maxwell was transferred to a lower-security Texas prison in early August, a week after meeting with Todd Blanche, the Justice Department's second-in-command and Donald Trump's former personal lawyer.

According to a transcript of the interview, published Friday, the former socialite said that Donald Trump had always been "very cordial and very kind" to her.

"And I just want to say that I admire his extraordinary achievement in becoming president now. And I like him, I always have," she said.

Asked last month about the possibility of granting a presidential pardon or commutation of Ghislaine Maxwell's sentence, Donald Trump assured that he had "not thought about it" and that the time was not right to talk about it.

Ghislaine Maxwell was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in prison for recruiting underage girls between 1994 and 2004 for Jeffrey Epstein to sexually exploit.