Jeffrey Epstein’s imprisoned former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell repeatedly denied to the Justice Department witnessing any sexually inappropriate interactions with Donald Trump, according to records released Friday meant to distance the Republican president from the disgraced financer.
The Trump administration issued hundreds of pages of transcripts from interviews that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche conducted with Maxwell last month as the administration was scrambling to present itself as transparent amid a fierce backlash over an earlier refusal to disclose a trove of records from the sex-trafficking case.
The records show Maxwell, a onetime socialite who was convicted in 2021 of helping lure teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein, repeatedly showering Trump with praise and denying under questioning from Blanche that she had observed Trump engaged in any form of sexual behavior. The administration was presumably eager to make such denials public at a time when the president has faced questions about a long-ago friendship with Epstein and as his administration has endured continued scrutiny over its handling of evidence from the case.
The transcript disclosure represents the latest Trump administration effort to repair self-inflicted political wounds after failing to deliver on expectations that its own officials had created through conspiracy theories and bold pronouncements that never came to pass. By making public two days worth of interviews, officials appear to be hoping to at least temporarily keep at bay sustained anger from Trump’s base even as they send Congress evidence that they had previously kept from view.
Blanche prefaced the interview by saying Maxwell had been given limited immunity, allowing her to speak freely without fear of prosecution for anything she said. The only exceptions, he said, were if she lied or gave statements inconsistent with what she’d previously said.
The Justice Department released a transcript of an interview between a senior administration official and Ghislaine Maxwell, the imprisoned former associate of Jeffrey Epstein.
Maxwell told Blanche she believes she first met Trump in 1990 — before she met Epstein.
“I may have met Donald Trump at that time, because my father was friendly with him and liked him very much,” she said, referring to Robert Maxwell, who owned the New York Daily News at the time.
“President Trump was always very cordial and very kind to me. And I just want to say that I find — I — I admire his extraordinary achievement in becoming the president now. And I like him, and I’ve always liked him. So that is the sum and substance of my entire relationship with him,” she said, according to the transcript.
Maxwell said Epstein and Trump were “friendly” but “I don’t think they were close friends.”
Maxwell told Blanche she never witnessed Trump or former President Bill Clinton doing anything inappropriate.
“I actually never saw [Trump] in any type of massage setting,” Maxwell said. “I never witnessed [Trump] in any inappropriate setting in any way. [Trump] was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.”
Asked if Clinton had ever gone to Epstein’s private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Maxwell said “he never, absolutely never went.”
“And I can be sure of that because there’s no way he would’ve gone,” she continued. “I don’t believe there’s any way that he would’ve gone to the island, had I not been there. Because I don’t believe he had an independent friendship, if you will, with Epstein.”
Trump has said repeatedly — including earlier Friday — that Clinton had visited the island “28 times.” Clinton has previously denied ever going there.
President Donald Trump dismissed calls to release the Epstein files as a “hoax,” saying that his relationship with sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was “old history” that had dissolved over a disagreement over hired help.
In the interview, Blanche asked Maxwell if she knew whether Epstein maintained a “black book” or client list containing names of famous people that he knew.
“Yeah, there is no list. We’ll start with that,” Maxwell said.
Prodded further about a client list, Maxwell said: “Absolutely no. There is no list. There is no, I’m not aware of any blackmail. I never heard I never heard that. I never saw it, and I never, I never imagined it.”
Blanche asked Maxwell whether she remembered the names of people who had sent letters to contribute to a 50th birthday album for Epstein in 2003.
“It’s been so long. I want to tell you, but I don’t remember,” Maxwell said.
Blanche was referring to a Wall Street Journal article that reported Trump was among those who submitted a letter to the book more than two decades ago. NBC News has not independently verified the documents, and the president has denied submitting a letter.
Asked if she remembered Trump submitting a letter, card or note, Maxwell responded: “I don’t.”
Maxwell was also asked whether she remembered seeing the book or any portion of the letters in her discovery in New York, and she said she did, but that “there was nothing from President Trump.”
Pressed again on whether Trump had submitted a letter for Epstein’s 50th birthday, Maxwell said, “I do not remember.” Maxwell also said she did not have a recollection of a letter containing a drawing of a naked woman.
Trump sued the Journal last month for $10 billion in damages and a jury trial over the report.
Maxwell responded “no” when Blanche asked whether she knew Epstein to communicate with FBI agents as a source or otherwise. Asked whether he would have been likely to tell her if he was an FBI source, Maxwell said that he would have bragged about it.
“I think if he was for real, I think he would’ve bragged about it to me as a show off, because he could be a showoff. And if he wasn’t, he might have dropped it like he was cool. And I don’t think — I don’t remember him doing either,” Maxwell said.
“Now, with, again, the caveat that in his — before I met him, finding money, I think he may have suggested that there was some people who helped him, but that’s the only context that I recall that in,” Maxwell added.
Asked what she meant by “finding money,” Maxwell recalled that Epstein had shown her “a photograph that he had with some African warlords or something,” and that was her sole memory “of something nefarious — not nefarious. I don’t even know if it was nefarious, but covert, I suppose, would be the word.”
Asked about other intelligence agencies, like the CIA or Defense Intelligence or any other law enforcement agency, Maxwell said, “OK. I don’t think so. I think that — I don’t remember anything like that. I just don’t think he had the wherewithal,” and that it was “bulls—.”
Maxwell did express skepticism about the medical examiner’s ruling that Epstein killed himself.
“I do not believe he died by suicide,” she said.
Brittany Henderson, an attorney for numerous Epstein victims and survivors, accused Maxwell in a statement of seeking clemency from Trump.
“Ghislaine Maxwell was federally indicted on two perjury counts as a result of her testimony during her civil deposition. Having been convicted of sex trafficking, she is now in jail presumably hoping that she will receive a pardon from President Trump,” Henderson said in a statement.
“I can’t imagine that her testimony will be given much weight by anyone with any knowledge whatsoever of her involvement with Jeffrey Epstein,” she added.
David Markus, Maxwell’s lawyer, said his client is “innocent and never should have been tried, much less convicted, in this case.”
“She never committed or participated in sexual abuse against minors, or anyone else for that matter. In fact, the government has admitted that it did not even consider her a conspirator during the extensive investigation into Epstein in the Southern District of Florida. The only reason she was ever charged is that she served as a scapegoat after Jeffrey Epstein died in prison,” Markus said in a lengthy statement.
Markus went on to express gratitude to the Trump administration for publicizing the recordings of Maxwell’s interview with Blanche.
“We are thankful to the Department of Justice and to Todd Blanche for making these tapes and transcripts public so that people can judge for themselves. We are also grateful to the President for his continued commitment to the truth in this matter and for refusing to cave to the mob,” Markus said.
After her interview, Maxwell was moved from the low-security federal prison in Florida where she had been serving a 20-year sentence to a minimum security prison camp in Texas. Neither her lawyer nor the federal Bureau of Prisons have explained the reason for the move.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he had no prior knowledge that Jeffrey Epstein’s former associate, convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, would be transferred from a Florida prison to a minimum security prison in Texas.
The Epstein case had long captured public attention in part because of the wealthy financer’s social connections over the years to prominent figures including Prince Andrew, Clinton and Trump, who has said his relationship with Epstein ended years before. Epstein was arrested in 2019 on sex-trafficking charges, accused of sexually abusing dozens of teenage girls, and was found dead a month later in a New York jail cell in what investigators described as a suicide.
The saga has consumed the Trump administration over the last month following an abrupt two-page announcement from the FBI and Justice Department that Epstein had killed himself despite conspiracy theories to the contrary, that a “client list” that Attorney General Pam Bondi had intimated was on her desk did not actually exist and that no additional documents from the high-profile investigation were suitable to be released.
The announcement produced outrage from conspiracy theorists, online sleuths and Trump supporters who had been hoping to see proof of a government coverup. That expectation was driven in part by comments from officials including FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, who on podcasts before taking their current positions had repeatedly promoted the idea that damaging details about prominent people were being withheld.
Patel, for instance, said in at least one podcast interview before becoming director that Epstein’s “black book” was under the “direct control of the director of the FBI.”
The administration had an early stumble in February when far-right influencers were invited to the White House in February and provided by Bondi with binders marked “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” and “Declassified” that contained documents that had largely already been in the public domain.
After the first release fell flat, Bondi said officials were poring over a “truckload” of previously withheld evidence she said had been handed over by the FBI and raised expectations of forthcoming releases.
But after a weekslong review of evidence in the government’s possession, the Justice Department said last month that no “further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.” The department noted that much of the material was placed under seal by a court to protect victims and “only a fraction” of it “would have been aired publicly had Epstein gone to trial.”
Faced with fury from the base, Trump sought to quickly turn the page, shutting down questioning of Bondi about Epstein at a White House Cabinet meeting and deriding as “weaklings” supporters who he said were falling for the “Jeffrey Epstein Hoax.”
During a Cabinet meeting, President Trump interrupted as Attorney General Pam Bondi was asked about Jeffrey Epstein and criticized ongoing media focus on the case.
The kerfuffle also created bitter divisions within the administration, as Bondi and Bongino angrily clashed at a White House meeting last month. Bongino was uncharacteristically silent on social media for several days after that.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
The full transcripts of the interviews are below.
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