Sex trafficker and Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell may invoke her Fifth Amendment right when giving testimony in response to a congressional subpoena.
Maxwell’s lawyer, David Oscar Markus, told the Daily Beast that it “remains a big if” as to whether Maxwell will plead the Fifth to prevent self-incrimination.
“If Ms. Maxwell agrees to testify before Congress and not take the 5th—and that remains a big if—she would testify truthfully, as she always has said she would and as she will with Mr. Blanche,“ Markus said, ahead of her meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
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“The truth should not be feared or preemptively dismissed. No previous prosecutor from the Southern District of New York or elsewhere has had the courage to meet with Ms. Maxwell and ask her these important questions,” Markus continued.
“So we are grateful to Mr. Blanche and his DOJ that they are approaching this with an open mind. That’s how our system is supposed to work. As for the Congressional subpoena, Ms. Maxwell is taking this one step at a time. She looks forward to her meeting with the Department of Justice, and that discussion will help inform how she proceeds.”
When asked how it would view Maxwell pleading the Fifth, the White House referred the Daily Beast to the Justice Department, which declined to comment.
Earlier Wednesday, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer issued the subpoena to Maxwell, which proposes that she be deposed August 11 in the low security women’s prison in Florida where she has been serving her 20-year-sentence for sex trafficking and conspiracy to recruit underage girls for sex acts.
Maxwell’s testimony is significant enough that GOP Rep. Scott Perry has urged “immediate action” from the Federal Bureau of Prisons to ensure her safety, in light of Epstein’s 2019 jail cell death following his arrest for sex trafficking.
Looming over Maxwell’s testimony as well as her meeting with Blanche is how Trump, who wished Ghislaine “well” after her 2020 arrest, has the ability to pardon her.
This fact has led some commentators to question the veracity of what Maxwell would end up telling Congress, if anything.
“The only reason for Maxwell’s criminal defense attorney to talk to Todd Blanche is to get her out of prison,” MSNBC anchor Lawrence O’Donnell said Tuesday on The Last Word. “Any criminal defense lawyer would be able to tell Ghislaine Maxwell exactly what she has to say to get out of prison.”
“She has to say Donald Trump knew nothing about it, knew nothing about what we were doing to those girls,” O’Donnell continued. “And it would be very helpful to Donald Trump if Ghislaine Maxwell was also willing to say something incriminating about other prominent people who knew Jeffrey Epstein, like maybe Bill Clinton.”
The president, meanwhile, has been trying to distract his base by tapping into culture war topics like the football team once known as the Washington Redskins and by launching attacks on his political opponents. But bombshell reports on his relationship with Epstein have made the socialites’ interconnected pasts hard to ignore.
