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CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig expressed serious skepticism over claims made by Ghislaine Maxwell in the just-released transcripts of her interview with the Department of Justice.
Maxwell, currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for helping disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse underage girls, is seeking a pardon from President Donald Trump and sang his praises in her interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche last month.
Richard Corkery/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Image
Asked Friday on CNN’s “The Lead” whether he found Maxwell’s account “credible,” Honig responded, “Oh my gosh, no,” before explaining what he found odd about her take.
“In this transcript, Ghislaine Maxwell provides a simply bizarre worldview wherein almost nobody did anything wrong,” Honig said. “She doesn’t even actually implicate Jeffrey Epstein.”
Maxwell, he went on, “basically says” in the transcripts that she doesn’t “have any knowledge” of Epstein’s alleged crimes, and also maintains that she herself “is absolutely 100% innocent.”
The DOJ’s chat with Maxwell came amid rising public outrage over the Trump administration’s resistance to releasing files related to the investigation into Epstein, who was accused of operating a sex trafficking ring involving minors. Epstein, who pleaded guilty in 2008 to charges in Florida of soliciting sex from a minor, died in prison in 2019 while facing federal sex trafficking charges.
In recent weeks, Trump has faced renewed scrutiny over his years of friendship with Epstein and Maxwell. In the transcripts released Friday, Maxwell claimed Trump and Epstein weren’t “close friends,” and said she “never witnessed” Trump in “any inappropriate setting in any way.”
Davidoff Studios Photography via Getty Images
The convicted sex trafficker also said Trump was “always very cordial and very kind” and made a point to note her admiration for his “extraordinary achievement in becoming the president now.”
Maxwell also stated that former president Bill Clinton “absolutely never went” to Epstein’s notorious private island and had no “independent friendship” with Epstein.
On CNN, Honig said he was “actually surprised” to see that Maxwell didn’t “implicate anybody” in the interview.
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“Even if a juror was to take everything in this transcript as true, there would be nobody else to charge or convict with anything,” he said. “Yet another reason why I’m just not buying this.”
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