🌊 The Ghislaine Transcript: Part 2

What Ghislaine Maxwell told Todd Blanche on day two of their conversation

By Rob McGreevy

We went through the 500-page transcript of the two-day conversation between Ghislaine Maxwell and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. Yesterday, we brought you the notable parts of day one; today, we bring you day two.

The first day of Maxwell’s two-day Department of Justice (DoJ) interview session in July focused on her relationship – working and romantic – with Jeffrey Epstein from the early 1990s through the early 2000s. On day two, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche spent a considerable amount of time questioning Maxwell about two things: The nature of payments she received from Epstein and the numerous trips taken by powerful figures on Epstein’s plane.

On day one, Maxwell revealed that Epstein had paid her a yearly salary of up to $250,000 in the 1990s and 2000s. On day two, Blanche asked about a series of lump-sum payments she received from Epstein that she had not voluntarily disclosed.

Blanche recalled three specific payments – $18M in 1999, $5M in 2002, and $7.4M in 2007 – that Epstein wired to accounts in Maxwell’s name. Maxwell evaded the question, saying she didn’t know what the money was for, then concluded, “I don’t believe any of that was my money.”

Blanche said that prosecutors in Maxwell’s 2021 sex trafficking conviction believed the payments were for bringing girls to Epstein; Maxwell denied it.

“The idea that you were paid $30M between ‘99 and 2007 by Mr. Epstein to reward you for recruiting young women…you’re saying that is categorically, completely false?”

“That is categorically false, correct,” she responded.

Maxwell proceeded to name drop a who’s-who of power brokers with whom she had ties.

She met Elon Musk in 2011 at Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s birthday party. She was close with former NY Governor Andrew Cuomo’s ex-wife, Kerry Kennedy, and attended their wedding. Kennedy, who is now divorced from Cuomo, is the sister of current Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr., whose name Maxwell also dropped in her testimony.

“Bobby knew Mr. Epstein,” she told Blanche, recalling that the three of them once went on a fossil hunting expedition together to the Dakotas.

But the politician who came up the most in the conversation was Bill Clinton. Describing Clinton as “a man that I found truly extraordinary,” Maxwell waxed poetic about his charity, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), and her role in it.

“I was part of the beginning process of the Clinton Global Initiative,” Maxwell said. “That was something that I helped with…Epstein may have helped me help them and in that context, he may well have involved himself, but only in the context of something that I was trying to do.”

“That was me,” she said.

The statement – downplaying Epstein’s links to CGI – contradicts testimony from Epstein’s own lawyers.

“Mr. Epstein was part of the original group that conceived the Clinton Global Initiative,” Epstein’s lawyers, including Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz, wrote to the US Attorney’s Office while defending Epstein’s original prostitution solicitation charge in 2007.

Blanche then asked about flights Clinton took on Epstein’s plane and whether or not the two had a relationship outside of Maxwell. She denied that.

“I don’t believe there was any relationship, other than I helped – well, without me, I don’t think there would’ve been those flights, because I was the one who asked Epstein to provide the plane for – well, certainly I remember the one to Africa, of course, that big trip,” she said.

“That big trip” was a reference to a trip to Africa taken by Clinton, Epstein, Chris Tucker, and Kevin Spacey in 2002, ostensibly to combat the AIDS epidemic. Maxwell then said there was also a flight to Egypt and one to London, but she couldn’t remember if those were all the same trip. When asked how many other times Clinton flew on Epstein’s plane, besides the ones she described, she said, “I think it was – there was twice, maybe. There was that. But it will reflect on the logs. There won’t be anything that’s not on the logs that you have already.”

The logs show the former president flying on Epstein’s plane 26 times over the course of six separate trips. Yet Maxwell said the majority of the flights she took with Clinton were without Epstein and not on his plane.

While Maxwell’s recollection was spotty – potentially a product of what she said was brain damage from being woken up every two hours over a years-long suicide watch – she was quite emphatic about a few things. One: She never saw any non-consensual sexual behavior take place. Two: She never participated in the procuring of any underage girls. A jury convicted her of that in 2021.

“[Things] as described in my trial did not happen as described. I’m not saying that Mr. Epstein did not do those things…I am not here to defend him. But what I can say is that I did not participate in that activity,” she claimed to Blanche.

Blanche responded that numerous women testified under oath that Maxwell knowingly recruited underage women to give Epstein massages.

Maxwell again denied: “I never knew that and I can categorically state that had any child said to me that they were 14, 15, 16, maybe not 17, because 17 in England, I mean, if someone had said they were 17, I don’t – but I’ve read so much that that did happen…I would never have permitted such a thing, I don’t even know what I would have done.”

Maxwell continued to refute the testimony of numerous women who claimed under oath that Epstein abused them when they were underage. Again, a jury found Maxwell guilty of these crimes.

Blanche told Maxwell that he wanted to find out her level of complicity in Epstein’s abuse of underage girls.

“I really want to have a frank discussion about [what] some of these women have said, you know, ‘Ms. Maxwell was there,’ you know, to varying degrees. ‘She saw me there, the door was open when I was there.’ And then much more egregious, right? That you participated and that you were part of it. And so what I really want you to have an opportunity to say to us is where on the spectrum the truth is. Whether it’s somewhere in the middle, whether it’s one extreme or another extreme,” Blanche said.

Families of Epstein’s victims, like that of the late Virginia Roberts Giuffre, have blasted the DoJ for letting Maxwell – who was convicted of sexually trafficking underage girls to Epstein – share her side. In a statement, the Roberts family condemned the DoJ’s decision to release the files, accusing the agency of giving Maxwell “a platform to rewrite history.”

“The content of these transcripts is in direct contradiction with felon Ghislaine Maxwell’s conviction for child sex trafficking,” the family of Giuffre, who took her own life in April, said in a statement. “This travesty of justice entirely invalidates the experiences of the many brave survivors who put their safety, security, and lives on the line to ensure her conviction, including our sister.”

Others, however, saw the files as a deathblow to the broader Epstein conspiracy. Popular independent journalist Michael Tracey said Maxwell’s testimony “drove a stake through the heart of Epstein mythology.”

It’s unclear what’s next for Maxwell. While her testimony and praise of Trump ignited speculation that she was angling for a pardon, the president has remained ambivalent. So far, he has claimed that nobody asked him to pardon her, insisted that he has the power to do so, and said, “Right now, it would be inappropriate to talk about it.”

Maxwell is currently appealing her 2021 conviction, with her lawyers arguing that the non-prosecution agreement the federal government struck with Epstein in 2008 should cover Maxwell as well. Her lawyers have urged the Supreme Court to take up the case, while the DoJ asked the Court not to do so. The Supreme Court will likely decide whether or not to take the case in September.

Yet Maxwell’s conversation with Blanche may already be yielding benefits for the sex trafficker: Following her DoJ interview, Maxwell was moved from a co-ed, low-security prison in Florida to a women-only, minimum-security prison camp in Texas, which the Roberts family described as a “country club prison.” If she does not get a pardon or successful appeal, the 63-year-old will likely serve the 12 remaining years of her sentence in the Texas prison camp.