Maxwell Never Witnessed Trump in ‘Inappropriate Setting,’ Transcript Says

 

Maxwell Never Witnessed Trump in ‘Inappropriate Setting,’ Transcript Says

 

The transcripts and audio, covering two days of discussions between Ms. Maxwell and Todd Blanche, the Justice Department’s No. 2, are likely to raise as many questions as they answer.

 

By Glenn Thrush Chris Cameron Alan Feuer Maggie Haberman and Sharon LaFraniere

Glenn Thrush, Chris Cameron and Sharon LaFraniere reported from Washington, and Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman from New York.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/22/us/politics/ghislaine-maxwell-doj-transcript-trump.html

Aug. 22, 2025

 

Ghislaine Maxwell, a longtime confidante of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, told a top administration official she never saw President Trump engage in improper or illegal acts during his long friendship with Mr. Epstein, according to transcripts released late Friday.

 

The transcripts and audio, covering two days of interviews in late July between Ms. Maxwell and Todd Blanche, the former Trump defense lawyer tapped to the No. 2 post at the Justice Department, are likely to raise as many questions as they answer. Time and again she claimed not to have witnessed events or punted when asked to provide details of known incidents.

 

Ms. Maxwell has been seeking to overturn or reduce her 20-year sentence, giving her a powerful incentive to tell Mr. Trump’s team what it wanted to hear.

 

Mr. Epstein’s victims and their families vehemently objected to the interview, and her subsequent transfer to a cushier prison, accusing Mr. Trump of offering a sweetheart deal to a convicted sex offender who would say anything to protect herself, and him.

 

In fact, many of Ms. Maxwell’s statements appeared to buttress Mr. Trump’s contention that the Epstein case is old news. He has urged supporters to drop their obsession with uncovering new evidence of a sinister conspiracy involving wealthy and powerful men.

 

During the interview, Ms. Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 for aiding in Mr. Epstein’s trafficking of underage girls, calmly swatted down any suggestion that there were significant details in the government’s investigative files that had not already been made public.

 

“I actually never saw the president in any type of massage setting,” Ms. Maxwell said in a muffled English accent in the conference room of a Florida courthouse. “I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way.”

 

The department released transcripts from two days of discussions between Ms. Maxwell, the longtime confidante of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, and Todd Blanche, the department’s No. 2 official.

 

Ms. Maxwell — who, according to prosecutors, has a history of self-serving falsehoods — knocked down the central pillars of the Epstein conspiracy theories, one by one. “There is no list” of powerful clients, she said, no blackmail campaign by Mr. Epstein to extort money or favors, and no dark secrets about Mr. Trump, who once considered Mr. Epstein a close friend.

 

She disputed the official narrative on only one point, but it was an essential one — the government’s finding that Mr. Epstein’s jailhouse death by hanging in 2019 was self-inflicted.

 

“I do not believe he died by suicide, no,” she told Mr. Blanche, adding that she had no idea who killed her onetime lover and employer. “In prison, where I am, they will kill you or they will pay somebody, a prisoner, to kill you for $25 worth of commissary” items.

 

Mr. Blanche’s highly unusual sit-down with Ms. Maxwell, 63, was followed by her transfer from a restrictive prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Bryan, Texas.

 

Ms. Maxwell, who is seeking a pardon or reduction of her long prison sentence for sex trafficking, downplayed the president’s relationship with Mr. Epstein. She went out of her way to tread lightly when the subject turned to Mr. Trump, who has not ruled out issuing her a pardon.

 

“President Trump was always very cordial and very kind to me,” she told Mr. Blanche. “I admire his extraordinary achievement in becoming the president now. And I like him, and I’ve always liked him.”

 

She described Mr. Trump as “a gentleman in all respects.”

 

Ms. Maxwell also denied recruiting an underage victim of Mr. Epstein who said that she had been recruited while working as a spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago in 2000.

 

“I’ve never recruited a masseuse from Mar-a-Lago,” Ms. Maxwell said. The victim, Virginia Giuffre, who was 16 at the time, said she was approached by Ms. Maxwell at the resort and invited to become Mr. Epstein’s traveling masseuse.

 

Whatever Ms. Maxwell’s motives, or the veracity of her statements, the audio provides a glimpse into the life of a woman who lived in the shadow, and service, of powerful and profoundly troubled men — first her father, the British publishing magnate Robert Maxwell, and then Mr. Epstein.

 

Ms. Maxwell, now confined to a cell and prison togs, relayed to Mr. Blanche, with an air of detachment that at times suggested she was talking about someone else, details of her former life with Mr. Epstein, adjacent to fame and power, without material want or guardrails.

 

At one point, she casually described how Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now the health and human services secretary, once joined Mr. Epstein on a trip to hunt for dinosaur bones in the Dakotas. At another, she dismissed the suggestion that former President Bill Clinton was among the men who received massages in her presence.

 

When Mr. Blanche asked her if there were “any international businessmen or politicians” whose close relationship with Mr. Epstein had not received sufficient public scrutiny, she replied: “Off the top of my, head, I can think of Ehud Barak,” the former Israeli prime minister.

 

Pressed about many famous people in Mr. Epstein’s orbit, Ms. Maxwell disclosed very little. Over and over, she said that the celebrities — Elon Musk, Andrew M. Cuomo, John F. Kerry, Ted M. Kennedy, Sarah Ferguson, Naomi Campbell, Kevin Spacey and Larry Summers — were just friends with her and Mr. Epstein.

 

At times, she defended Mr. Epstein, suggesting his behavior changed after he began taking testosterone in the late 1990s. “That altered his character,” she said. “He became more aggressive.”

 

She described her amazement at how the myth of Mr. Epstein still had such a hold on the American public — more than 15 years after he was first charged.

 

“So that narrative that was created and then built upon, and it just mushroomed into what —basically this is like a Salem witch trial,” she said. “People have gone and lost their minds for this thing. I understand that. But the issue is, how do you satisfy a mob who can’t understand the lifestyle because it’s like P. Diddy in Redux on TV with Clintons and Trump. I mean, it’s — it’s bananas.”

 

Ms. Maxwell was dismissive of Mr. Epstein’s documented history of preying on young women and underage girls, despite her own conviction on enabling his behavior. She said she never saw Mr. Epstein encourage men to have inappropriate contact with his masseuses, minors or young women.

 

Asked if she knowingly selected girls for Mr. Epstein, Ms. Maxwell replied, “I never ever checked their age and I never checked their credentials.”

 

For the most part, she remained composed. But she became momentarily rattled, it seemed, when Mr. Blanche asked her to discuss the intimate details of her own relationship with Mr. Epstein, particularly whether she suspected that he was cheating on her.

 

“I’m not stupid, I’m very bright, I’ve had an excellent education, I traveled all over the world, I had had boyfriends,” Ms. Maxwell said, appearing to struggle to find the right words. “But I had never met or understood that somebody could be so — would lie to me.”

 

In the interviews, Mr. Blanche, an experienced and polished trial lawyer, appeared at times to be conducting a not-unfriendly direct examination of Ms. Maxwell, guiding her through a series of tough questions but seldom following up on her evasions or statements that conflicted with established facts about the Epstein case.

 

Ms. Maxwell went so far as to suggest that none of the famous men who hung out with Mr. Epstein came for sex.

 

“If you met Epstein, there is no way that this cast of characters, of which it’s extraordinary, and some are in your cabinet, who you value as your co-workers, and you know, would be with him if he was a creep or because they wanted sexual favors,” she said. “A man wants sexual favors, he will find that. They didn’t have to come to Epstein for that.”

 

Mr. Blanche did not press her.

 

The release of the transcripts and the audio came on the same day the Justice Department sent Congress thousands of pages of documents related to its investigation into Mr. Epstein in response to a subpoena from a House committee.

 

This spring, Mr. Trump was told by Attorney General Pam Bondi that his name appeared in unreleased files from the investigation. The president has not been accused of any wrongdoing related to the case, and the files are likely to contain references to many people who came in contact with Mr. Epstein.

 

In the end, Ms. Maxwell said nothing to challenge those conclusions, and even pushed back on the idea that the two men were actually friends.

 

Mr. Trump has denied that he sent an enigmatic and affectionate note for a book compiled by Ms. Maxwell to celebrate Mr. Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003.

 

When Mr. Blanche asked if she remembered “President Trump submitting a letter or a card,” she responded, “I don’t.”

 

Asked to define their relationship, Ms. Maxwell replied, “I don’t think they were close friends.”

 

Michael Gold contributed reporting.

 

Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.

 

Chris Cameron is a Times reporter covering Washington, focusing on breaking news and the Trump administration.

 

Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.

 

Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent for The Times, reporting on President Trump.

 

Sharon LaFraniere is an investigative reporter focusing on the Trump administration.