US Politics
Elon Musks uses emoji to hint at whether he thinks Trump will pardon Ghislaine Maxwell
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Elon Musk is elevating claims online President Donald Trump may be preparing to pardon Ghislaine Maxwell, the associate of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein serving a 20-year federal sentence for conspiring to sexually abuse minors.
The X-owning billionaire responded to a post on social media speculating about the political reaction to a potential pardon with a bullseye emoji.
The original post, shared on X, claimed without evidence Maxwell will name a “bunch of Democrats” and “billionaires” as alleged Epstein clients, reaffirm the president’s claims he did “nothing wrong” during his documented friendship with Epstein, earning praise and a pardon along the way from Trump and MAGA for “taking down the pedophiles” and “telling the truth.”
Since his bitter public split this summer with the White House, Musk has continued to allege, without providing proof, that Trump’s presence in the so-called Epstein files is the reason the administration hasn’t done more to honor its pledge to release information about the sex offender, who died in prison in 2019 while awaiting a sex trafficking trial.
Speaking to reporters Monday, the president remained noncommittal about a pardon for Maxwell.
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“Well, I’m allowed to give her a pardon, but nobody’s approached me with it. Nobody’s asked me about it,” he said. “It’s in the news – that aspect of it – but right now, it would be inappropriate to talk about it.”
Maxwell’s lawyers have been pushing to overturn her sentence at the Supreme Court, as well as appealing to Trump directly to intervene.
“We are appealing not only to the Supreme Court but to the president himself to recognize how profoundly unjust it is to scapegoat Ghislaine Maxwell for Epstein’s crimes, especially when the government promised she would not be prosecuted,” Maxwell’s attorney David Oscar Markus said in a statement on Monday about her appeal, which claims a previous non-prosecution agreement against Epstein should have also covered Maxwell.
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Markus has said he hopes that in regards to a potential pardon for Maxwell, Trump “exercises that power in the right and just way.”
Maxwell, a former British socialite, has come to occupy a central role in the Epstein scandal plaguing the White House.
In addition to her appeal at the Supreme Court, which the Justice Department opposes, Maxwell has been subpoenaed to testify before Congress and has sat for lengthy two-day meetings with the Deputy Attorney General. Her lawyer says Maxwell answered questions about “about 100 different people” with potential ties to the Epstein ring.
Trump, who had a multi-year friendship with Epstein, has denied any wrongdoing. The president said he turned down a trip to Epstein’s island abuses and said any mentions of his name in the so-called Epstein files could be the result of a Democratic “hoax.”
The president has also denied the validity of an explicit 2003 letter the Wall Street Journal reported Trump sent to Epstein for his 50th birthday, suing the publication and its corporate parents for defamation.
