Ghislaine Maxwell takes the Fifth in U.S. House committee appearance from prison

Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, declined to answer questions from U.S. House lawmakers in a deposition Monday, but indicated that if President Donald Trump ended her prison sentence, she was willing to testify that neither he nor former president Bill Clinton had done anything wrong in their connections with Epstein.

The U.S. House Oversight Committee had wanted Maxwell to answer questions during a video call to the federal prison camp in Texas where she’s serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking, but she invoked her Fifth Amendment rights to avoid answering questions that would be self-incriminating.

She’s come under new scrutiny as lawmakers try to investigate how Epstein, a well-connected financier, was able to sexually abuse underage girls for years.

Amid a reckoning over Epstein’s abuse that has spilled into nations around the globe, lawmakers are searching for anyone who was connected to Epstein and may have facilitated his abuse.

Also on Monday, legislators were able begin looking through unredacted versions of the files on Epstein that the Department of Justice released to comply with a law passed by Congress last year.

Maxwell has been seeking to have her conviction overturned, arguing she was wrongfully convicted. The Supreme Court rejected her appeal last year, but in December requested that a federal judge in New York consider what her attorneys describe as “substantial new evidence” that her trial was spoiled by constitutional violations.

Bipartisan disappointment

Dressed in a brown, prison-issued shirt and sitting at a conference table with a bottle of water, Maxwell repeatedly said she was invoking her “Fifth Amendment right to silence,” video later released by the committee showed.

During the closed-door deposition, Maxwell’s attorney David Oscar Markus said in a statement to the committee that “Maxwell is prepared to speak fully and honestly if granted clemency by President Trump.”

He added that both Trump and Clinton “are innocent of any wrongdoing,” but that “Ms. Maxwell alone can explain why, and the public is entitled to that explanation.”

Democrats argued that Maxwell’s assertion was a brazen effort to have Trump end her prison sentence.

“It’s very clear she’s campaigning for clemency,” said Rep. Melanie Stansbury, a New Mexico Democrat.

Asked about Maxwell’s appeal, the White House pointed to previous remarks from the president that indicated the prospect of a pardon was not on his radar.

And other Republicans push backed to the notion quickly after Maxwell made the appeal.

“NO CLEMENCY. You comply or face punishment,” Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, wrote on social media. “You deserve JUSTICE for what you did you monster.”

The Republican chair of the committee, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, said it was “very disappointing” that Maxwell declined to participate in the deposition.

Comer had subpoenaed her last year, but her attorneys have consistently told the committee that she won’t answer questions.

Comer came under pressure to hold the deposition as he pressed for the committee to enforce subpoenas on Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. After Comer threatened them with contempt of Congress charges, they both agreed to sit for depositions later this month.

Comer has been haggling with the Clintons over whether that testimony should be held in a public hearing, but Comer reiterated on Monday that he would insist on holding closed-door depositions and releasing transcripts and video later.

Maxwell, who was once charged with perjury, was moved to a Texas prison camp from a Florida facility with a higher level of security shortly after she was interviewed last summer by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche of the Trump administration to elicit any new information about Epstein’s crimes.

Calls for Lutnick to resign

Meanwhile, Republican Rep. Thomas Massie on Sunday called on Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to resign over misrepresenting his communications with Epstein. Massie was joined a day later in that regard by Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House’s oversight committee.

“It’s now clear that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has been lying about his relationship with Epstein. He said he had no interactions with Epstein after 2005, and we now know they were in business together,” Garcia said in a post to X.

The files recently released by the Justice Department indicate that Lutnick may have visited Epstein’s private island for lunch in 2012 and invited Epstein to a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton in 2015.

That would contradict Lutnick’s claim that he vowed never to “be in a room” with Epstein following a 2005 incident in which the financier showed Lutnick, his Manhattan neighbour, a massage table at his townhouse and made a sexually suggestive comment.

Epstein was convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor in a 2008 Florida plea deal that did not receive national media attention at the time but came to be viewed as a lenient sentence with opaque circumstances. Allegations that Epstein trafficked some of his victims emerged over time. A new federal indictment resulted in 2019, but the 66-year-old died by suicide in a jail cell before being tried.

Massie, speaking to CNN on Sunday, drew a contrast with the situation in Britain, where Epstein ties have led to adverse consequences “for less than what we’ve seen Howard Lutnick lie about.”

In Britain, the former prince Andrew has been stripped of a number of royal privileges, while former U.S. ambassador Peter Mandelson has resigned over lying about his interactions with Epstein. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has seen two key aides depart in connection with the circumstances surrounding Mandelson’s appointment.