(NEW YORK) — The woman thought to have the most direct knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein’s decades-long sex-trafficking operation claims there was no client list, no blackmail scheme and — to her knowledge — no high-profile Epstein associates who committed illicit acts in connection with the notorious sex-offender’s crimes.
That’s according to an account provided by Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell to a top official of the U.S. Department of Justice during a highly unusual two-day interview session last month, sources briefed on the contents of the discussions told ABC News.
Maxwell told Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche that during her time with Epstein — which ranged from the early 1990s to the mid-2000s — she never witnessed nor heard of any inappropriate or criminal activity by President Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton, nor any of the well-known men who associated with Epstein, according to the sources.
A transcript of Maxwell’s interview with Blanche, and audio of the interview, were among the items provided by the DOJ on Friday to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, in response to a congressional subpoena for the complete investigative files on Epstein, sources said.
The 63-year old Maxwell, who has been incarcerated since her arrest in 2020, also claimed she had been misidentified by a key witness at her criminal trial and insisted she was not involved in the sexual exploitation of minors, the sources said.
Blanche — who previously served as a personal defense attorney to President Donald Trump — announced his intention to speak with Maxwell in a social media post last month, as the Trump administration sought to quell the self-inflicted controversy surrounding its decision not to release the government’s investigative files on Epstein, after repeatedly promising to do so.
The Department of Justice — in an unsigned memo released last month explaining its decision — said that a “systematic review” revealed no incriminating client list and no evidence “that could predicate an investigation into uncharged third parties.”
Maxwell was granted limited immunity for the interview with Blanche, sources previously told ABC News, meaning nothing she said could be used against her, unless she lied.
She is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for aiding and participating in Epstein’s trafficking of underage girls, which involved a scheme to recruit young women and girls for massages of Epstein that turned sexual. Federal prosecutors in New York said Maxwell helped Epstein recruit, groom and ultimately abuse girls as young as 14.
Despite her conviction at trial in 2021 — where she declined to take the witness stand — Maxwell claimed in her interview with Blanche that she had been wrongly accused and did not receive a fair trial. She maintained, as she had done previously in a 2016 deposition in a civil case, that she never recruited anyone underage to massage Epstein and never witnessed or participated in any criminal acts, the sources said.
Federal prosecutors charged Maxwell with perjury for alleged lies she told during the 2016 deposition. And the government repeatedly assailed her credibility during her criminal case, citing her “willingness to lie brazenly under oath about her conduct,” according to court records.
Maxwell was indicted in July 2020, during the first Trump administration. Her trial occurred in late 2021, while President Joe Biden was in the White House. The perjury counts against her were eventually dropped after her conviction on the more serious charges.
Blanche’s meeting with Maxwell came just days after the Justice Department fired Maurene Comey, a federal prosecutor in New York with the most detailed knowledge of the case. Comey, the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, led the criminal prosecution of Maxwell.
Blanche — the top deputy to U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi –indicated that the goal of the Maxwell meeting was to determine if she had “information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims,” according to a July 22 statement posted to social media by the DOJ.
According to sources familiar with internal deliberations that preceded the meeting with Maxwell, Blanche was encouraged by some top administration officials to seek information that could lead to criminal investigations that might quiet the outrage from some of Trump’s most vocal supporters.
“The FBI and the DOJ will hear what she has to say,” Blanche wrote in the post. “Until now, no administration on behalf of the Department had inquired about her willingness to meet with the government. That changes now.”
Sources told ABC News, however, that it was Maxwell’s legal team that initiated the request for the meeting. Maxwell has a pending application before the U.S. Supreme Court to review her conviction. Her lawyers have stated that they have not yet asked President Trump to commute her sentence or to pardon her, but that Maxwell “would welcome any relief.”
Blanche was accompanied by an FBI agent and another DOJ official and Maxwell was with three of her attorneys, according to sources familiar with the meeting.
The unusual meeting involving the nation’s second-ranking law enforcement official and a convicted sex-trafficker evoked a strong response from some victims of Epstein and Maxwell.
Annie Farmer, one of the witnesses who testified for the prosecution at Maxwell’s trial, told a federal court last week that she and other victims “unequivocally object to any potential leniency that the government may be considering for Maxwell.”
During nine hours of questioning over two days, Maxwell was quizzed by Blanche about dozens of famous people — politicians, business titans and Hollywood stars — who had previously been named as having associated with Epstein. And in each instance, Maxwell indicated that she had never witnessed nor heard about any alleged wrongdoing, the sources said.
Maxwell’s attorney, David Markus, told reporters after the meetings concluded that his client had been asked by Blanche about “one hundred different people.”
“She didn’t hold anything back,” Markus said.
Among those Blanche inquired about, sources told ABC News, were tech billionaires Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman and Elon Musk; political figures Ehud Barak, Robert Kennedy Jr. and the late U.S. Senator George Mitchell; and celebrities Kevin Spacey, Chris Tucker and Naomi Campbell.
The rumored existence of an apocryphal “Epstein client list” has long fueled speculation of a “deep state” cover-up to protect an elite cabal of alleged participants in Epstein’s crimes. Some of the most vocal purveyors of the theory — including FBI Director Kash Patel and his top deputy Dan Bongino — have since taken up prominent posts in the Trump administration.
But Maxwell said there was no such list and that she saw no indication that Epstein had obtained compromising information that he used to extort others, according to the sources who were briefed on the interview.
At one point in the interview, Maxwell likened the quest to find others complicit in Epstein’s crimes to the Salem witch trials of the 17th century, according to a person familiar with what Maxwell said.
Significant portions of the interview were dedicated to inquiries about President Trump and ex-President Bill Clinton.
Before any allegations of sexual misconduct against Epstein surfaced in 2005, Trump and Clinton each spoke glowingly of Epstein, and court records have included documents and testimony indicating that — at separate times — both men flew with Epstein on his private jets.
Clinton’s association with Epstein was first noted publicly in 2002, after reporters learned of the former president’s journey that year on Epstein’s jet for a humanitarian mission to multiple African nations. Clinton told New York magazine through a spokesman at the time that “Jeffrey is both a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist with a keen sense of global markets and an in-depth knowledge of twenty-first-century science.”
In that same article, Trump boasted of his friendship with Epstein, saying, “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy.”
“He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life,” Trump told the magazine.
Maxwell told Blanche she had a friendship with former President Clinton after being introduced by a mutual acquaintance, the sources said. Maxwell said she had suggested to Epstein that he allow Clinton to use his private jumbo jet to fly to multiple international destinations in Africa, Asia and Europe in the early 2000s. Clinton, Maxwell said, had no particular interest in Epstein other than having the use of his plane.
Despite President Trump’s oft-repeated claims that Clinton had traveled more than 20 times to Little St. James — Epstein’s private U.S. Virgin Islands estate where much of Epstein’s abuse is alleged to have occurred — Maxwell said the former president had never been there and wouldn’t have wanted to go, because he had no relationship with Epstein, according to sources familiar with what Maxwell told Blanche.
Bill Clinton has previously said through a spokesperson that he “knew nothing” about Epstein’s crimes, had never visited the island, and that all the flights on Epstein’s aircraft in 2002 and 2003 were associated with work for the Clinton Foundation.
As for the current president, Maxwell said that she first knew of Trump through her late father, who purchased the New York Daily News in 1991. She said she only saw Trump and Epstein, both native New Yorkers, together in social settings and never saw or heard anything inappropriate about Trump while he was with Epstein.
And at a time when her legal team has publicly signaled her hopes for a reprieve from the president, Maxwell, the sources said, expressed admiration for Trump.
Published reports in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal last month indicated that the decision not to release the Epstein files came after President Trump was informed in May that his name was among those that appeared multiple times in the documents. The president has denied that he was told his name appeared in the files.
The appearance of a name in the Epstein files is not evidence of illicit activity.
President Trump has said he ended his association with Epstein before any allegations of sexual abuse were raised in Florida in the mid 2000s.
Trump said in 2019, after Epstein’s arrest for child sex trafficking, that he hadn’t spoken to him in 15 years. More recently, the president has claimed he split with Epstein after discovering Epstein was allegedly poaching employees from the spa at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s private club in Palm Beach.
Maxwell was escorted from her prison cell in Tallahassee to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the two days of meetings with Blanche. A week later, she was transferred to a minimum-security federal prison camp for women in Texas, with no official explanation for the move.
Maxwell is the Oxford-educated daughter of Robert Maxwell, the larger-than-life publishing baron whose rags-to-riches story captivated England. She lived an extravagant life among the British elite until her father’s business empire collapsed in the wake of his death in 1991. She relocated to New York looking for a fresh start and was soon seen in the company of the mysterious multimillionaire Epstein.
Epstein was arrested in July 2019 and charged in a federal indictment with conspiracy and child sex trafficking. He died in custody a month later, while awaiting trial. His death was ruled a suicide by hanging.
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