US Politics
Trump team weighs releasing Ghislaine Maxwell’s interview with DOJ officials over Epstein case: report
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The Trump administration is considering publicly releasing an audio recording of an interview with Ghislaine Maxwell and senior officials from the Department of Justice about Jeffrey Epstein, according to a new report.
It was not previously known that such a recording existed, and officials are currently discussing whether or not to release a transcript of the discussion between the British socialite and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
Maxwell, 63, was the disgraced financier’s ex-girlfriend, and is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence after her 2021 conviction for her role in a scheme to sexually exploit and abuse multiple girls. Her attorneys have taken an appeal of her conviction to the Supreme Court.
The interview between the socialite and the DOJ came following ongoing pressure on the administration to be more transparent over the Epstein case, following a July 6 memo which stated that convicted pedophile died by suicide in 2019 and there was no evidence to support the existence of a so-called “client list.” Such claims caused uproar among the MAGA faithful.
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Sources told CNN that the audio recording was currently being transcribed and digitized, but that some parts that may reveal sensitive information – like the names of victims – would need to be redacted.
The outlet reported that as of Tuesday morning, a final decision on whether to release the recording and the transcript, had not been made.
CNN also reported that, per its sources, some within the administration were concerned that making details from the interview public would bring the Epstein controversy back into the public spotlight, when many officials close to the president believe the story has largely died down.
When asked for comment by The Independent, the administration denied that any such decisions were being made about the transcript, and that Trump had already addressed the issue.
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In a statement, Steven Cheung, White House Communications Director, said: “This is nothing more than CNN trying desperately to create news out of old news. He already addressed this issue in an interview with Newsmax, a real news outlet that routinely gets better ratings than CNN.”
Discussions about the recordings and transcript come after the DoJ admitted that the grand jury transcripts in Maxwell’s criminal case, contain mostly publicly available information.
Trump previously asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to make public “any and all pertinent” grand jury transcripts in both the Epstein and Maxwell cases, in order to stymie the ongoing furore.
A judge overseeing Maxwell’s case asked the government to provide more information to the court. The department provided a version of the transcripts that identifies which information is not publicly available. However, Bondi admitted in a Monday filing that “much” of the information in the transcripts was already made publicly available.
