Mother Jones illustration; Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty; Laura Cavanaugh/Getty; Kypros/Getty
Last week, top officials in Donald Trump’s version of the Justice Department, including Todd Blanche, the president’s former personal criminal attorney, paid a visit to Ghislaine Maxwell, the socialite turned sex trafficker. Maxwell is currently serving 20 years for her role in helping the financier-pedophile Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse women and girls; according to a 2022 pre-sentencing memorandum in her case, Maxwell also abused some girls herself, fondling and groping their breasts to normalize the hyper-sexualized environment that she and Epstein had created. While no notes or details about last week’s meetings have been released, it’s exceedingly clear that the Trump administration is hoping their conversation with her will pry loose some new names of Epstein associates—and end the scandal that’s engulfed the administration and the president for the past several weeks.
Trump hoped and expected his base would move on, as has happened countless times with scandals involving the president.
At this point, Donald Trump is dealing, still, with a nearly unprecedented situation: the real and undiminished fury of a good portion of his base over his own administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case. Since July 6, when his FBI and Department of Justice released an unsigned memo declaring that Epstein died by suicide, did not maintain a “client list,” and was not blackmailing powerful people, that anger has gone on and on, bolstered by a number of very stupid steps the Trump administration has taken to try to quell it. Trump himself is said to be “exasperated” by the ongoing scandal, having hoped and expected that his base would have moved on by now, as has happened countless times before with other scandals and controversies involving the president.
Instead, as the Epstein controversy drags on, interviewing Maxwell is one of the ways that the Trump administration is clearly hoping to finally put the Epstein headlines behind them. Seeing an opening, Maxwell’s attorney David Markus is also urging the Supreme Court to overturn her conviction while appealing to Trump for a pardon. The president himself has refused to rule out the idea of pardoning her, telling a press gaggle recently, “I’m allowed to do it, but it’s something I have not thought about.” On Tuesday, Markus said that while Maxwell has signaled a willingness to testify before Congress, she would invoke her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination during that questioning if she’s not granted “formal immunity.”
Maxwell could agree to name names in her conversations with Trump’s DOJ, identifying other powerful people who haven’t previously been publicly accused of engaging in sex crimes with Epstein, while at the same time declaring that Trump himself never engaged in sexually inappropriate behavior.
But hammering out such a deal carries its own risks, says Mike Rothschild, an author and journalist who studies conspiracy theories, given that Maxwell’s attorney has made clear that she expects what her attorney has called “relief”—widely taken to mean a pardon or sentencing reduction—in return for such cooperation.
“I would imagine that every Republican running for office next year is begging him not to just outright pardon Ghislaine Maxwell,” Rothschild says. “They’re going to have to spend the next year and a half trying to justify something with no justification to voters who think she’s nothing more than a convicted trafficker. He doesn’t have to run again, but they do. And if a Maxwell pardon really does shatter his base and peel off a big number of Trump-only voters, they’re the ones who will have to pick up the pieces.”
Trump himself called the controversy a “hoax” and “bullshit,” which did not make it go away.
The facts will complicate any effort by Trump or his defenders to position Maxwell as a brave truthteller who has now decided to blow the whistle on Epstein, her former boyfriend and co-conspirator. As ABC News recently pointed out, prosecutors said in Maxwell’s 2022 pre-sentencing memorandum that she’d neither been forthcoming nor remorseful ahead of trial, accusing her of having “lied repeatedly about her crimes, exhibited an utter failure to accept responsibility, and demonstrated repeated disrespect for the law and the Court.” As Rothschild notes, “Even the fact that it’s possible Maxwell might get clemency or some kind of voided conviction is shaping up to be one of the biggest political scandals in American history.”
Recent history, and Trump’s long-established patterns, suggest other possibilities for how he and his allies could try to divert attention from the Epstein case. One avenue that Trump’s prominent friends have already attempted is to simply declare the story to be over—something that’s so far had limited success. As Slate pointed out, multiple news outlets declared last week that Trump had successfully convinced his MAGA base to stop being mad at him about Epstein, including the New York Times, Politico, the Washington Post, and CNN. Every story cited the same prominent source: Trump ally and former White House official Steve Bannon. (In other words, and now more than ever, just because Bannon says something does not make it true.) This month, Trump himself called the Epstein controversy a “hoax” and “bullshit” and castigated his supporters for believing it, which also did not work to make it go away.
Another clear possibility is that the administration finds an internal scapegoat to blame the Epstein mess on. That would most likely be Attorney General Pam Bondi; as the face of the Justice Department, Bondi has been the target of the most focused MAGA outrage: the House GOP, including Speaker Mike Johnson, have already made clear that they’re dissatisfied with Bondi’s handling of the case. Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, a popular far-right podcaster turned political appointee, has also made clear that he’s been feuding with Bondi, reportedly threatening to quit several weeks ago if she wasn’t fired, a promise he has thus far not made good on. If the Trump administration chose to fire Bondi and appoint someone new who declares they are investigating the whole mess from scratch, it could at least quiet the headlines for several weeks or months.
An unlikely fourth option is a large document dump, as the administration recently did with files relating to the assassinations of JFK and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr; the King files also further detail the FBI’s years-long surveillance of the civil rights leader before his murder, and were released despite objections from King’s children.
“Every Republican running for office next year is begging him not to just outright pardon Ghislaine Maxwell.”
But there are reasons this probably hasn’t already been done, despite Bondi’s promises to release more, and her failed February stunt where conservative influencers were handed binders that turned out to contain previously released information from Epstein’s flight logs and address book. Releasing more information carries significant privacy risks, as well as legal ones. Any Epstein files would certainly contain the names of living people, who could then be threatened by vigilantes accusing them of sex crimes; it could also breach the privacy of Epstein victims who haven’t chosen to publicly come forward. Bondi has also said the Epstein files contain images and videos of child sexual exploitation material; releasing that would be a criminal offense and would also re-victimize the people depicted in them. And, of course broader disclosures could draw in the president: as Bondi reportedly told Trump in May, his name is mentioned in Epstein files, although it’s not clear in what form.
The fifth and most likely option is a version of what is already playing out, to limited success: trying to find another scandal that will appeal to—and distract—the MAGA base. Since the Epstein scandal broke, Trump officials have promised to criminally investigate former CIA director John Brennan and former FBI director James Comey. More recently, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has started promoting a contorted scandal accusing the Obama administration of criminal conduct. Right-wing and conspiracy outlets like Infowars have tried to play along, touting headlines that President Obama will soon be charged with “treasonous conspiracy.” Thus far, though, there’s very little sign that the broader MAGA base is excited—or distracted—by these announcements.
As these many and chaotic possibilities continue to unfold, Trump officials are struggling to keep the positive attention and loyalty of their base. Chief among them is Bongino, who announced in a cryptic tweet this week that shocking things are taking place behind the scenes—a promise that he and other administration officials have made multiple times.
“During my tenure here as the Deputy Director of the FBI, I have repeatedly relayed to you that things are happening that might not be immediately visible, but they are happening,” Bongino tweeted, in a statement that might have occasioned deja vu for his readers. “The Director and I are committed to stamping out public corruption and the political weaponization of both law enforcement and intelligence operations. It is a priority for us. But what I have learned in the course of our properly predicated and necessary investigations into these aforementioned matters, has shocked me down to my core. We cannot run a Republic like this. I’ll never be the same after learning what I’ve learned.”
Bongino’s promise of new revelations at some unspecified future point seemed designed to reassure his impatient followers. While that may have worked before, it’s less clear that it’ll have its intended effect this time—leaving Trump and his administration, again, desperately looking for a new way out.