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Maxwell Asks for Clemency, Pleads Fifth02/10 06:15
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend of Jeffrey
Epstein, declined to answer questions from House lawmakers in a deposition
Monday, but indicated that if President Donald Trump ended her prison sentence,
she was willing to testify that neither he nor former President Bill Clinton
had done anything wrong in their connections with Epstein.
The House Oversight Committee had wanted Maxwell to answer questions during
a video call to the federal prison camp in Texas where she's serving a 20-year
sentence for sex trafficking, but she invoked her Fifth Amendment rights to
avoid answering questions that would be self-incriminating. She's come under
new scrutiny as lawmakers try to investigate how Epstein, a well-connected
financier, was able to sexually abuse underage girls for years.
Amid a reckoning over Epstein's abuse that has spilled into the highest
levels of businesses and governments around the globe, lawmakers are searching
for anyone who was connected to Epstein and may have facilitated his abuse. So
far, the revelations have shown how both Trump and Clinton spent time with
Epstein in the 1990s and early 2000s, but they have not been credibly accused
of wrongdoing.
Dressed in a brown, prison-issued shirt and sitting at a conference table
with a bottle of water, Maxwell repeatedly said she was invoking "my Fifth
Amendment right to silence," video later released by the committee showed.
During the closed-door deposition, Maxwell's attorney David Oscar Markus
said in a statement to the committee that "Maxwell is prepared to speak fully
and honestly if granted clemency by President Trump."
He added that both Trump and Clinton "are innocent of any wrongdoing," but
that "Ms. Maxwell alone can explain why, and the public is entitled to that
explanation."
Maxwell's appeal hits pushback
Democrats said that was a brazen effort by Maxwell to have Trump end her
prison sentence.
"It's very clear she's campaigning for clemency," said Rep. Melanie
Stansbury, a New Mexico Democrat.
Asked Monday about Maxwell's appeal, the White House pointed to previous
remarks from the president that indicated the prospect of a pardon was not on
his radar.
And other Republicans push backed to the notion quickly after Maxwell made
the appeal.
"NO CLEMENCY. You comply or face punishment," Republican Rep. Anna Paulina
Luna, wrote on social media. "You deserve JUSTICE for what you did you monster."
Maxwell has also been seeking to have her conviction overturned, arguing
that she was wrongfully convicted. The Supreme Court rejected her appeal last
year, but in December she requested that a federal judge in New York consider
what her attorneys describe as "substantial new evidence" that her trial was
spoiled by constitutional violations.
Maxwell's attorney cited that petition as he told lawmakers she would invoke
her Fifth Amendment rights.
Family members of the late Virginia Giuffre, one of the most outspoken
victims of Epstein, also released a letter to Maxwell making it clear they did
not consider her "a bystander" to Epstein's abuse.
"You were a central, deliberate actor in a system built to find children,
isolate them, groom them, and deliver them to abuse," Sky and Amanda Roberts
wrote in the letter addressed to Maxwell.
Maxwell was moved from a federal prison in Florida to a low-security prison
camp in Texas last summer after she participated in two-days of interviews with
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
The Republican chair of the committee, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, had
also subpoenaed her at the time, but her attorneys have consistently told the
committee that she wouldn't answer questions. However, Comer came under
pressure to hold the deposition as he pressed for the committee to enforce
subpoenas on Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. After
Comer threatened them with contempt of Congress charges, they both agreed to
sit for depositions later this month.
Comer has been haggling with the Clintons over whether that testimony should
be held in a public hearing, but Comer reiterated Monday that he would insist
on holding closed-door depositions and later releasing transcripts and video.
Lawmakers review unredacted files
Meanwhile, several lawmakers visited a Justice Department office in
Washington Monday to look through unredacted versions of the files on Epstein
that the department has released to comply with a law passed by Congress last
year. As part of an arrangement with the Justice Department, lawmakers were
given access to the over 3 million released files in a reading room with four
computers. Lawmakers can only make handwritten notes, and their staff are not
allowed in with them.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, spent
several hours in the reading room Monday morning. He told reporters as he
returned to the Capitol that even if all the House members who triggered the
vote on releasing the files "spent every waking hour over at the Department of
Justice, it would still take us months to get through all of those documents."
Democrats on Raskin's committee are looking ahead to a Wednesday hearing
with Attorney General Pam Bondi, where they are expected to sharply question
her on the publication of the Epstein files. The Justice Department failed to
redact the personal information of many victims, including inadvertently
releasing nude photos of them.
"Over and over we begged them, please be careful, please be more careful,"
said Jennifer Freeman, an attorney representing survivors. "The damage has
already been done. It feels incompetent, it feels intimidating and it feels
intentional."
Democrats also say the Justice Department redacted information that should
have been made public, including information that could lead to scrutiny of
Epstein's associates.
Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who sponsored the legislation to
force the release of the files, said that after reviewing the unredacted
versions for several hours, he had found the names of six men "that are likely
incriminated by their inclusion." He called on the Justice Department to pursue
accountability for the men, but said he could potentially name them in a House
floor speech, where his actions would be constitutionally protected from
lawsuits.
Massie, along with California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, said they also came
across a number of files that still had redactions. They said that was likely
because the FBI had turned over redacted versions of the files to the Justice
Department.
Khanna said "it wasn't just Epstein and Maxwell" who were involved in
sexually abusing underage girls.
Release of the files has set in motion multiple political crises around the
world, including in the United Kingdom, where Prime Minister Keir Starmer is
clinging to his job after it was revealed his former ambassador to the U.S. had
maintained close ties to Epstein. But Democratic lawmakers bemoaned that so far
U.S. political figures seem to be escaping unscathed.
"I'm just afraid that the general worsening and degradation of American life
has somehow conditioned people not to take this as seriously as we should be
taking it," Raskin said.
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