Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Philip Rotner: Thanks for having me, Greg. I appreciate it.
Rotner: Ghislaine Maxwell was a British socialite—part of the Maxwell family—and she was a very close associate of Jeffrey Epstein. In fact, many of Epstein’s victims have described her as something of a procurer for him. She would round up young women to come and give Epstein massages and perform sex acts. And according to some of the victims, she actually participated physically in some of those acts. She was convicted in 2021 of a variety of actions connected to Epstein: sex trafficking of a minor, transporting a minor, conspiracy to commit sex trafficking, and so on. And she’s currently serving a 20-year sentence.
Rotner: So it’s good that you broke it down into those two pieces because there are, indeed, two pieces. Ostensibly, he’s conducting some investigation in response to the hue and cry coming originally from the MAGA right and now from everywhere to release more information about Epstein and the Epstein files. What I believe he’s really trying to do is create the appearance of an investigation. It looks very much like a sham to me. He is Trump’s lawyer. He says even recently that he continues to have an attorney-client relationship with Donald Trump. He’s not only was Trump’s lawyer but he also reports to Donald Trump now. And he’s the one who’s going out to talk to Ghislaine Maxwell to unearth evidence that clearly involves Donald Trump—at least as a witness and maybe even as a subject. So it just seems completely phony, and any pretext that there’s a real investigation going on, I think, is just that.
Rotner: Well, I think what he is ostensibly asking her about is not necessarily focused—at least not primarily—on Donald Trump. I think what he is supposed to be talking to her about is to see if there is any information she can provide [that indicates] complicity by anyone in Jeffrey Epstein’s really despicable conduct with young women. I think the subtext here is Trump, but ostensible point of this interview is to gather information to see if anything needs to be followed up. After all, these girls were trafficked. Epstein was accused of trafficking, and Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of trafficking. They must have been trafficked to somebody. And one would suppose that Maxwell would have a lot of information about to whom these girls were trafficked.
Rotner: I think it’s about right, and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that he’s the one that’s doing it. A lot of commentators have pointed out that this is something that would normally be done by a line attorney, not even the head attorney of a New York office or a Florida office. And in this case, it’s the deputy attorney general. And it’s not only the deputy attorney general but it’s the deputy attorney general who’s represented Donald Trump in at least four matters—one of which, like the Epstein matter, had to do with sexual misconduct, or at least claims of illicit sexual involvement. And it’s just odd that they would send somebody who’s so compromised, so conflicted to do this job. The fact that they have just raises questions. And to my thinking, it just stinks to high hell.
Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyer David Oscar Markus (audio voiceover): We haven’t spoken to the president or anybody about a pardon just yet. And listen, the president this morning said he had the power to do so. We hope he exercises that power in the right and just way.
Rotner: Well, I think that that’s from Maxwell’s point of view. I think that’s what the whole thing is about. I think that she is going to do and say anything that she can do and say to help her get a pardon. She’s already talking in Trumpspeak. They’re already talking about how very unfair the trial was. They’re talking about a supposed broken promise. That was, by the way, not made to her; if it was made to anyone, it was made to Jeffrey Epstein, not to go after co-conspirators. But they’re setting up what I would call a quasi-legal argument—that there was something wrong with her conviction, and that Trump can and should remedy that by a commutation or pardon or something of that ilk.
Rotner: Sure. We know Maxwell has lied in the past about her involvement with Epstein, and she has absolutely nothing to gain by saying anything that would harm Trump in any way at all. Everything points to her interest being to exonerate Donald Trump in exchange for a pardon. She may not get the pardon. I don’t know how far their discussions are, but I know one thing: She won’t get the pardon if instead of exonerating Trump, she points the finger at him. That’s death to her hopes for a pardon. So it’s pretty clear where she’s going to go on this.
Rotner: Well, it’s a question of how he’s functioning internally. It’s hard to read into his mind. I’m sure he would never say to anyone, probably including Donald Trump, because that would be a record of saying something incriminating. He’s not going to say to anyone, I’m going to go down there and get her to exonerate you so that you can give her a pardon. But the charade is just so transparent. And the comments from Maxwell’s attorney … on that point, so clear that this is about pardon. That’s what this interview is about. It’s about a pardon, and the rest of it is just window dressing.
Rotner: Clearly. And do we think for even a moment that Todd Blanche thinks he’s going to go and generate evidence incriminating Donald Trump?
Rotner: That’s just ridiculous. So we’ve got a one-way investigation. There’s two things that can happen. He gets nothing out of Maxwell. She’s difficult. She’s not communicative. That’s one thing that could happen. The other thing that happens is that she says, Oh, Donald Trump never was involved in any of the misconduct with younger women, and, I don’t know anything about that. I think that’s where she’s going to land. I also think that it’s important to set the level here as to what we know about Trump’s involvement with Epstein. We know, on the one end, he wasn’t just a casual acquaintance who had the misfortune to run across Epstein at a party or some kind of political event. And on the other end, we know that at least there is no publicly known information that he participated in any criminal activity with Epstein.
Sargent: That’s the thing. This is the deputy attorney general of the United States. He’s not supposed to be going down there for the explicit purpose of exonerating Trump.
Sargent: Right. Philip, is there a scenario where Republicans bring Maxwell in to testify to Congress? I have to think that if so, you might see Democrats questioning her under oath as well. Couldn’t they ask her under oath to come clean about what’s in the information involving Trump or whatever else?
Sargent: Yeah. Unfortunately, that seems like it may prove right. This is where the whole thing breaks down for me. It seems like at some point, no matter what, we are eventually going to learn whatever there is to learn about Epstein’s associates—Trump included or not. There’s reporting suggesting that Epstein’s fiftieth birthday album, which Trump reportedly contributed to, is in the possession of Epstein’s estate. If Democrats take back the house next year, they can just call up Epstein’s estate and say, Hey, send over the birthday album, will you? or they can subpoena it. There are also huge amounts of financial transactions involving Epstein on file with the Treasury Department right now in the form of suspicious activity reports from big banks. Democratic House can seek those. Won’t we sooner or later know more or less on both those fronts what there is to know and a lot more and beyond that?
So I think that’s going to come out. And I don’t know how it’s going to come out. It could be subpoenaed from Epstein’s estate; [it] could be leaked by somebody; there could be more than one copy. There’s likely more than one copy of the letter, the insert that’s at issue here. I’m sure that the only place that that document exists is not inside the hard copy of that book. So I think that that’s going to come out. Whether the whole story comes out ever, and by ever I mean at a time when it’s still of some public interest.… Sure, some 50 years from now it’s all going to be out there, one supposes. But whether it ever comes out in time to correspond with public interest and more importantly—perhaps—with elections, I think, is really in question. I’m not sure that that’s going to happen.
Rotner: Yeah. I do think that there’s that scenario. That’s a possibility. Because remember, Trump has got to make a decision too. Trump has got to decide whether the downside of giving a pardon outweighs the downside of not giving a pardon. And if the downside of not giving a pardon is that Ghislaine Maxwell unloads on him, then he’s going to decide that while it might cause some damage, the pardon route is the better one for him.
Rotner: It really is. Thanks for having me, Greg, and keep up the good work. We need to keep shining light on all of this stuff.
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