Ghislaine Maxwell declined to answer questions from a House committee, citing 5th Amendment rights

WASHINGTON — Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, declined to answer questions from House lawmakers in a deposition Monday, but indicated that if President Donald Trump ended her prison sentence, she was willing to testify that neither he nor former President Bill Clinton had done anything wrong in their relationships with Epstein.

The House Oversight Committee had wanted Maxwell to answer questions during a video call to the federal prison camp in Texas where she’s serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking, but she invoked her Fifth Amendment rights to avoid answering questions that would be self-incriminating. She’s come under new scrutiny as lawmakers try to investigate how Epstein, a well-connected financier, was able to sexually abuse underage girls for years.

Amid a reckoning over Epstein’s abuse that has spilled into nations around the globe, lawmakers are searching for anyone who was connected to Epstein and may have facilitated his abuse. So far, the revelations have shown how both Trump and Clinton spent time with Epstein in the 1990s and early 2000s, but they have not been credibly accused of wrongdoing.

During the closed-door deposition Monday, an attorney for Maxwell told lawmakers that if Trump granted her clemency, she would be willing to testify that neither Trump nor Clinton were culpable for wrongdoing in their relationships with Epstein, according to both Democratic and Republican lawmakers who exited the closed-door meeting.

Democrats said that was a brazen effort by Maxwell to have Trump end her prison sentence.

“It’s very clear she’s campaigning for clemency,” said Rep. Melanie Stansbury, a New Mexico Democrat.

Another Democratic lawmaker, Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, described Maxwell’s demeanor during the short video call as “robotic” and “unrepentant.”

Trump has not ruled out granting Maxwell clemency, but Republican pushback to that notion quickly rose after Maxwell made the appeal.

“NO CLEMENCY. You comply or face punishment,” Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, wrote on social media. “You deserve JUSTICE for what you did you monster.”

Maxwell has been seeking to have her conviction overturned, arguing that she was wrongfully convicted. The Supreme Court rejected her appeal last year, but in December she requested that a federal judge in New York consider what her attorneys describe as “substantial new evidence” that her trial was spoiled by constitutional violations.

Maxwell’s attorney cited that petition as he told lawmakers she would invoke her Fifth Amendment rights.

The Republican chair of the committee, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, told reporters that it was “very disappointing” that Maxwell declined to participate in the deposition.

Family members of the late Virginia Giuffre, one of the most outspoken victims of Epstein, also released a letter to Maxwell making it clear they did not consider her “a bystander” to Epstein’s abuse.

“You were a central, deliberate actor in a system built to find children, isolate them, groom them, and deliver them to abuse,” Sky and Amanda Roberts wrote in the letter addressed to Maxwell.

Maxwell was moved from a federal prison in Florida to a low-security prison camp in Texas last summer after she participated in two-days of interviews with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

Comer had also subpoenaed her at the time, but her attorneys have consistently told the committee that she wouldn’t answer questions. However, Comer came under pressure to hold the deposition as he pressed for the committee to enforce subpoenas on Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. After Comer threatened them with contempt of Congress charges, they both agreed to sit for depositions later this month.

Comer has been haggling with the Clintons over whether that testimony should be held in a public hearing, but Comer reiterated Monday that he would insist on holding closed-door depositions and later releasing transcripts and video.

Meanwhile, several lawmakers also planned on Monday to look through unredacted versions of the files on Epstein that the Department of Justice has released to comply with a law passed by Congress last year.