Convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell will exercise her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination later Monday when she appears virtually before the House Oversight Committee to be questioned about her links with late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Maxwell, 64, is serving a 20-year prison sentence after being convicted in December 2021 of sex trafficking, conspiracy and other charges in connection with her role as the perverted financier’s personal madam.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), confirmed Jan. 21 that Maxwell would appear before the committee. In response, Maxwell’s attorney, David Oscar Markus, warned his client would take the Fifth — citing the ongoing appeal of her conviction in Manhattan federal court.
“Of course, in the alternative, if Ms. Maxwell were to receive clemency,” Markus teased, “she would be willing—and eager—to testify openly and honestly, in public, before Congress in Washington, D.C.”
Ahead of Monday’s hearing, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) submitted seven questions he intended to ask Maxwell, including whether her legal team’s claim in a December filing that 29 associates of Epstein entered secret non-prosecution agreements was “accurate” and whether she would name those people.
Khanna also said he planned to ask Maxwell: “Did you or Mr. Epstein ever arrange, facilitate, or provide access to underage girls to President Trump?” — despite no evidence of wrongdoing by the president in the voluminous files released in recent months by both the Justice Department and the late financier’s estate.
Maxwell was previously interviewed for nine hours over two days this past July by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, telling him at one point that she “never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way” while Trump and Epstein were friends in the 1990s and early 2000s.
The UK-born socialite also provided almost no new information on Epstein’s other infamous associates, including Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew, Duke of York; ex-Harvard University President Larry Summers; Microsoft founder Bill Gates, or former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
Khanna also said he planned to ask Maxwell if she or Epstein maintained “client lists or records” and whether the onetime Wall Street whiz worked on behalf of any foreign governments or intelligence services.
The Trump administration has been dogged by the Epstein case since this past July 6, when the FBI and Justice Department issued a joint memo concluding that the convicted sex offender killed himself in his Manhattan jail cell on Aug. 10, 2019, while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges — and that he did not keep a list of rich and powerful friends to whom he trafficked girls as young as 14, contrary to widespread speculation.
Days after her interview with Blanche, Maxwell was transferred from federal prison in Tallahassee, Fla. to a medium-security camp in Texas — raising more eyebrows among critics who suggested that she was in line for a pardon or commutation from Trump.
The White House has insisted no such clemency is under consideration.
During her interview with Blanche, Maxwell compared the frenzied speculation to “a Salem witch trial.”
“People have gone and lost their minds for this thing. I understand that,” she said at one point. “But the issue is, how do you satisfy a mob who can’t understand the lifestyle?”
