Ghislaine Maxwell says she never saw Donald Trump in an inappropriate setting. Davidoff Studios/Getty Images
Ghislaine Maxwell has delighted MAGA loyalists by asserting that she never saw the man she is hoping will spring her from a 20-year prison sentence “in any inappropriate setting” throughout the years he spent hanging out with the late convicted sex trafficker and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
But Maxwell, convicted of sex trafficking minors and conspiracy, among other charges, whom Trump has already rewarded with a move to a minimum-security prison camp, went further than that, according to transcripts of her interviews with Justice Department officials released Friday.
“I never, ever saw any man doing something inappropriate with a woman of any age,” she said, referring to her years of interactions with men who socialized with Epstein, her former companion. “I never saw inappropriate habits.”
“That would be a flat no to any man,” she added.
Maxwell was interviewed over two days by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, whose past work as Trump’s personal attorney appears to create a sizeable conflict of interest. The former socialite continues to deny her own guilt in lining up sexual partners for Epstein, many of them underage, and is appealing her conviction. In her sessions with Blanche, conducted in July, she offered similarly worded exonerations of many of the prominent men whose relationships with Epstein have prompted accusations of wrongdoing. Nor, she said, was there any kind of a client list or instances of Epstein recording the men for whom he arranged sexual encounters.
Maxwell was bipartisan with her exonerations, claiming former president Bill Clinton, contrary to widespread speculation, was not close to Epstein, and did not visit Epstein’s notorious private island in the Caribbean.
“Absolutely never went,” she said. “And I can be sure of that because there’s no way he would’ve gone—I don’t believe there’s any way that he would’ve gone to the island, had I not been there. Because I don’t believe he had an independent friendship, if you will, with Epstein.”
“President Clinton was my friend, not Epstein’s friend,” Maxwell said.
Maxwell disputed claims by Epstein’s victim Virginia Giuffre—who died by suicide in 2025—that Prince Andrew, the brother of Britain’s King Charles, raped Giuffre during visits to an Epstein property, claiming the two never even met. (Andrew settled a lawsuit filed by Giuffre without admitting liability.)
What about the famous defense attorney and Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, who represented Epstein? Giuffre had leveled and then later retracted accusations against him that involved massages and a bathrobe. Did he, Blanche asked, ever do “anything inappropriate?”
“Absolutely not,” Maxwell said. “I don’t remember anything about him ever getting massaged. I don’t ever have any recall, I don’t believe I ever even saw him in a bathrobe. I have no knowledge of that.”
Nor did Maxwell recall if former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who socialized with Epstein while Summers was the president of Harvard University and Epstein was a donor, traveled on Epstein’s plane.
Blanche pressed Maxwell on a host of other famous men, including brothers Andrew and Chris Cuomo, the late Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy, and former Secretary of State John Kerry. Despite speculation, Maxwell said Epstein knew none of them. Blanche even asked about George Soros, the billionaire financier, who features in a variety of far-right, antisemitic conspiracy theories, including some involving Epstein.
“I don’t think [Epstein] knew him,” Maxwell said.
One exception, however, is Robert Kennedy Jr., now the Health and Human Services Secretary. Maxwell said that Kennedy had joined Epstein on a “dinosaur bone hunting trip in the Dakotas in the 1980s. But, as with all the others: “I never saw anything inappropriate with Mr. Kennedy.”
Maxwell also said that she does not recall a suggestive birthday note that the Wall Street Journal reported Trump sent Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003. Trump denies sending the letter and has sued the paper over its report. Maxwell does remember creating the “birthday book” for Epstein, which was reportedly filled with notes and testimonials from such luminaries as Clinton, Dershowitz, and financier Leon Black. The idea, Maxwell said, came from her mother. But she asserted that she could not remember whether Trump, or anyone specific, contributed.
“It’s been so long,” Maxwell said when asked to recall the names of contributors to the book. “I want to tell you, but I don’t remember.”
The trade here is obvious. Memory lapses that help the pardon-happy president try to move past speculation about his own involvement with late sex criminal offer Maxwell’s best bet for getting out of prison. Indeed, Maxwell, who federal prosecutors said lied “brazenly” under oath during her 2021 trial, has every reason to fib about Trump now. But laying it on so thick, in such a nakedly transactional exchange, may have the opposite of its intended outcome.
