Will Ghislaine Maxwell come through for Trump in the Epstein scandal?

At a courthouse in Palm Beach, Fla., President Donald Trump‘s former personal attorney and current Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche met yesterday for six hours with convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. It’s highly unusual for such a prominent Justice Department official to have such a meeting. But we are living in a highly usual time: The president’s years-long relationship with two convicted sex offenders is the subject of a roiling scandal, which even his own supporters suspect he is covering up.

Maxwell was the partner in crime of the late Jeffrey Epstein, the notorious financier and friend of the rich and famous, who also happened to be a sex offender and suspected abuser of underage girls. Since his death in prison in August 2019, which came as he was awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking and conspiracy charges, the MAGA movement has been demanding that the Justice Department release all the files related to the case — even though it has long been rumored, and apparently confirmed by the Wall Street Journal, that Trump is allegedly named in them multiple times. For nearly six years, MAGA has smelled a conspiracy, which led Trump and his cronies to pledge during the 2024 presidential campaign to release the files if he was elected. Now they are dancing as fast as they can to avoid doing just that, which has raised suspicions even more that something is amiss.

Aside from Epstein’s sweetheart plea deal with Florida prosecutors in 2008, which saw him serve a light prison sentence with cushy allowances, Maxwell is the only convicted perpetrator of these crimes to have paid a price. In December 2021, she was found guilty of “conspiracy to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, conspiracy to transport minors to participate in illegal sex acts, transporting a minor to participate in illegal sex acts, sex trafficking conspiracy, and sex trafficking of a minor.” She was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison the following June. 

This makes some people see Maxwell as a scapegoat, or even possibly a pawn, in the nefarious plans of rich and powerful men. While it’s true she has always been something of an elusive character in this saga, the evidence clearly shows she was a co-conspirator in a very sleazy enterprise — and her actions were at least partly a twisted labor of love.

Maxwell, who is currently appealing her conviction, appears to be anything but an innocent victim. Dozens of women have testified that she was a recruiter and a participant in the weird operation that she and Epstein cooked up in the early 1990s and ran for more than 15 years. Those were the very years in which Epstein became friends with Trump.

Maxwell was a society girl and the daughter of British media mogul Robert Maxwell, who doted on her, even as he was reputedly a violent martinet of a father. Like Trump and his daughter Ivanka, Robert Maxwell often had Ghislaine on his arm and bragged about her figure. According to observers, they were somewhat inappropriately affectionate, which is also reminiscent of Trump’s behavior with his eldest daughter when she was young.

Ghislaine Maxwell was a vivacious socialite, funny, smart and very raunchy. In the Netflix docuseries “Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich,” one of her acquaintances recalls her setting up a game after a dinner party in which all the men put scarves over their eyes while the women removed their tops. The men were directed to fondle the women and guess their identities. Maxwell’s acquaintance claimed to be appalled, but as happened so often in those circles, the rest didn’t bat an eye. The number of people who knew about or participated in her and Epstein’s sexcapades were allegedly legion.

After Maxwell’s father died in 1991 under unusual circumstances, the family was left nearly destitute when it was discovered he had plundered his companies’ pension funds. Ghislaine needed money badly, and apparently she also needed another relationship with a powerful man. Enter Epstein, the mysterious financier with plenty of money and a thirst for entry into elite circles. Maxwell was there to help with that. She knew many important people in America and Europe, and she had social skills Epstein did not possess. They made a good, if demented, team.

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And apparently, they had similar sexual appetites. During the early years of their relationship, when they were still a couple, one of Maxwell’s marks, a 21-year-old named Liz Stein, reported that she was working in a Manhattan department store when she delivered merchandise to the hotel where Epstein and Maxwell were staying. The pair brought Stein up to their room, where they began having sex in front of her and attempted to coerce her into joining them. She escaped what she believed was an impending assault, but she claimed that Maxwell pursued her for years afterwards.

It only got weirder after that. For years Maxwell allegedly recruited and groomed mostly underage or very young-looking women for Epstein to sexually exploit and abuse. According to one witness, when asked who these girls were, Maxwell replied, “They’re nothing.” She targeted runaways, girls in foster care and who were homeless, befriending and manipulating them, giving them a couple of hundred dollars to service Epstein — and allegedly his friends — and sometimes offering them bigger prizes like scholarships and travel. Toward the end, she was apparently recruiting girls to do the recruiting for her. Epstein is accused of flying them to his private island, and other places around the world, to be violently raped. According to federal prosecutors, it was a full-blown sex trafficking operation.

Blanche’s trip to see Maxwell has raised suspicions that, in Trump’s desperation to put this scandal behind him, he and the Justice Department may be willing to offer a pardon, clemency or a reduced sentence if she exonerates the president, and perhaps implicates his political enemies.

In a 2022 interview with journalist Daphne Barak published in The Sun, a British tabloid, Maxwell characterized the president as a loyal friend who maintained their relationship after her arrest. “We knew each other and mingled in the same circles, in New York, Palm Beach. I was very grateful when he wished me well after (the arrest). He got bad media for it, but he dared, while others didn’t…I was honoured he remembered me. Well, he is known to say what he thinks. It gave me a big boost.”

MAGA influencers such as Charlie Kirk seem to have no problem with a deal for the British socialite. Newsmax is also falling in line, referring to Maxwell as a “victim” herself. According to Blanche’s account of their meeting, “She answered all of the questions truthfully, honestly and to the best of her ability.” (He didn’t elaborate on how he verified the veracity of her answers.)

One of the prosecutors in Maxwell’s case was Maurene Comey, who was recently fired for no apparent reason by Attorney General Pam Bondi. (Comey is also the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, who was famously fired by Trump in 2017.) It’s fair to assume that if a deal is made, Trump will say that Maxwell was railroaded by Comey to cover up crimes by Democrats who were out to get Trump — or something like that. It really doesn’t have to make much sense. Virtually nothing does these days.

But there is no guarantee that would be the end of the matter either. You know what they always say whenever there’s a major political scandal: It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up. And this may be the sloppiest cover-up in American history.