WASHINGTON — House Republicans subpoenaed Jeffrey Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell for a deposition next month, citing the “immense public interest and scrutiny” surrounding her case and voluminous federal investigative files on the notorious deceased pedophile.
Maxwell is tentatively scheduled to sit for a deposition Aug. 11 at the Federal Correctional Institution Tallahassee, where she has been serving a 20-year prison sentence since 2022 after being convicted of taking part in a sex trafficking conspiracy involving the abuse of dozens of minors — some as young as 14 years old.
“While the Justice Department undertakes efforts to uncover and publicly disclose additional information related to your and Mr. Epstein’s cases, it is imperative that Congress conduct oversight of the federal government’s enforcement of sex trafficking laws generally and specifically its handling of the investigation and prosecution of you and Mr. Epstein,” wrote House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) in a cover letter accompanying the subpoena.
“In particular, the Committee seeks your testimony to inform the consideration of potential legislative solutions to improve federal efforts to combat sex trafficking and reform the use of non-prosecution agreements and/or plea agreements in sex-crime investigations.”
The Oversight panel’s subcommittee Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets had requested a Department of Justice briefing on the federal probe of Epstein and subsequently the release of “the entirety of the Epstein files.”
So far, the DOJ has declined to release all but a handful of documents previously disclosed as part of Maxwell’s trial, which ended in a conviction in December 2021.
On July 6, a joint DOJ-FBI memo concluded that Epstein, 66, committed suicide in his Manhattan lockup on Aug. 10, 2019, and that there was no “client list” of other perverts privy to the sickening scheme, no basis to charge third parties and “no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions.”
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on Tuesday revealed that he was also planning to meet with Maxwell “in the coming days.”
“President Trump has told us to release all credible evidence. If Maxwell has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the DOJ will hear what she has to say,” Blanche said in a statement.
“Until now, no administration on behalf of the Department had inquired about her willingness to meet with the government. That changes now.”
David Oscar Markus, Maxwell’s lawyer, said in statement that his client “is taking this one step at a time. She looks forward to her meeting with the Department of Justice, and that discussion will help inform how she proceeds.”
“If Ms. Maxwell agrees to testify before Congress and not take the 5th—and that remains a big if—she would testify truthfully, as she always has said she would and as she will with Mr. Blanche,” added Markus.
“The truth should not be feared or preemptively dismissed. No previous prosecutor from the Southern District of New York or elsewhere has had the courage to meet with Ms. Maxwell and ask her these important questions. So we are grateful to Mr. Blanche and his DOJ that they are approaching this with an open mind. That’s how our system is supposed to work.”
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