Epstein's former girlfriend told Justice Department she did not see
Trump act in 'inappropriate way'
[August 23, 2025]
By ERIC TUCKER, MICHAEL R. SISAK and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER
WASHINGTON (AP) — Jeffrey Epstein's imprisoned former girlfriend
repeatedly denied to the Justice Department witnessing any sexually
inappropriate interactions with Donald Trump, according to records
released Friday meant to distance the Republican president from the
disgraced financer.
The Trump administration issued transcripts from interviews that Deputy
Attorney General Todd Blanche conducted with Ghislaine Maxwell last
month as the administration was scrambling to present itself as
transparent amid a fierce backlash over an earlier refusal to disclose a
trove of records from the sex-trafficking case.
The records show Maxwell repeatedly showering Trump with praise and
denying under questioning from Blanche that she had observed Trump
engaged in any form of sexual behavior. The administration was
presumably eager to make such denials public at a time when the
president has faced questions about a long-ago friendship with Epstein
and as his administration has endured continued scrutiny over its
handling of evidence from the case.
The transcript release represents the latest Trump administration effort
to repair self-inflicted political wounds after failing to deliver on
expectations that its own officials had created through conspiracy
theories and bold pronouncements that never came to pass. By making
public two days worth of interviews, officials appear to be hoping to at
least temporarily keep at bay sustained anger from Trump’s base as they
send Congress evidence they had previously kept from view.
After her interview with Blanche, Maxwell was moved from the
low-security federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp
in Texas to continue serving a 20-year sentence for her 2021 conviction
on allegations that she lured teenage girls to be sexually abused by
Epstein. Her trial featured sordid accounts of the sexual exploitation
of girls as young as 14 told by four women who described being abused as
teens in the 1990s and early 2000s at Epstein's homes.
Neither Maxwell's lawyers nor the federal Bureau of Prisons have
explained the reason for the move, but one of her lawyers, David Oscar
Markus, said in a social media post Friday that Maxwell was “innocent
and never should have been tried, much less convicted.”
‘Never inappropriate’
“I actually never saw the President in any type of massage setting,”
Maxwell said, according to the transcript. “I never witnessed the
President in any inappropriate setting in any way. The President was
never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he
was a gentleman in all respects.”
Maxwell recalled knowing about Trump and possibly meeting him for the
first time in 1990, when her newspaper magnate father, Robert Maxwell,
was the owner of the New York Daily News. She said she had been to
Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, sometimes alone, but
hadn’t seen Trump since the mid-2000s.
Asked if she ever heard Epstein or anyone else say Trump “had done
anything inappropriate with masseuses” or anyone else in their orbit,
Maxwell replied, “Absolutely never, in any context.”
Maxwell was interviewed over the course of two days last month by
Blanche at a Florida courthouse. She was given limited immunity,
allowing her to speak freely without fear of prosecution for anything
she said except for in the event of a false statement.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department on Friday began sending to the House
Oversight Committee records from the investigation that the panel says
it intends to make public after removing victim's information.
High-profile contacts
The case had long captured public attention in part because of the
wealthy financer’s social connections over the years to prominent
figures, including Prince Andrew, former President Bill Clinton and
Trump, who has said he had a falling-out with Epstein years ago and well
before Epstein came under investigation.
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Maxwell told Blanche that Clinton was initially her friend, not
Epstein’s, and that she never saw him receive a massage — nor did
she believe he ever did. The only times they were together, she
said, were the two dozen or so times they traveled on Epstein’s
plane.
“That would’ve been the only time that I think that President
Clinton could have even received a massage,” Maxwell said. “And he
didn’t, because I was there.”
She also spoke glowingly of Britain’s Prince Andrew and dismissed as
“rubbish” the late Virginia Giuffre’s claim that she was paid to
have a relationship with Andrew and that he had sex with her at
Maxwell’s London home.
Maxwell sought to distance herself from Epstein’s conduct,
repeatedly denying allegations made during her trial about her role.
Though she acknowledged that at one point Epstein began preferring
younger women, she insisted she never understood that to “encompass
children.”
“I did see from when I met him, he was involved or -- involved or
friends with or whatever, however you want to characterize it, with
women who were in their 20s,” she told Blanche. “And then the slide
to, you know, 18 or younger looking women. But I never considered
that this would encompass criminal behavior.”
Epstein was arrested in 2019 on sex-trafficking charges, accused of
sexually abusing dozens of teenage girls, and was found dead a month
later in a New York jail cell in what investigators described as a
suicide.
A story that's consumed the Justice Department
The saga has consumed the Trump administration following a two-page
announcement from the FBI and Justice Department last month that
Epstein had killed himself despite conspiracy theories to the
contrary, that a “client list” that Attorney General Pam Bondi had
intimated was on her desk did not actually exist, and that no
additional documents from the high-profile investigation were
suitable to be released.
The announcement produced outrage from conspiracy theorists, online
sleuths and Trump supporters who had been hoping to see proof of a
government coverup. That expectation was driven in part by comments
from officials, including FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy
Director Dan Bongino, who on podcasts before taking their current
positions had repeatedly promoted the idea that damaging details
about prominent people were being withheld.
Patel, for instance, said in at least one podcast interview before
becoming director that Epstein’s “black book” was under the “direct
control of the director of the FBI.”
The administration had an early stumble in February when far-right
influencers were invited to the White House in February and provided
by Bondi with binders marked “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” and
“Declassified” that contained documents that had largely already
been in the public domain.
After the first release fell flat, Bondi said officials were poring
over a “truckload” of previously withheld evidence she said had been
handed over by the FBI and raised expectations of forthcoming
releases.
But after a weekslong review of evidence in the government’s
possession, the Justice Department determined that no “further
disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.” The department noted
that much of the material was placed under seal by a court to
protect victims and “only a fraction” of it “would have been aired
publicly had Epstein gone to trial.”
Faced with fury from his base, Trump sought to quickly turn the
page, shutting down questioning of Bondi about Epstein at a White
House Cabinet meeting and deriding as “weaklings” supporters who he
said were falling for the “Jeffrey Epstein Hoax.”
The Justice Department has responded to a subpoena from House
lawmakers by pledging to turn over information.
____
Associated Press writer Adriana Gomez Licon contributed to this
report.
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