U.S. Justice Department points transcripts of interviews with Jeffrey Epsteins ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell

The Justice Department on Friday (August 22, 2025) launched transcripts of interviews its No. 2 official did with Jeffrey Epstein’s imprisoned former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell because the Trump administration scrambles to current itself as clear amid a fierce backlash over an earlier refusal to reveal a trove of data from the sex-trafficking case.

The disclosure represents the newest Trump administration effort to restore self-inflicted political wounds after failing to ship on expectations that its personal officers had created via conspiracy theories and daring pronouncements that by no means got here to move.

By making public two days price of interviews, officers seem like hoping to at the very least quickly maintain at bay sustained anger from President Donald Trump’s base at the same time as they proceed to sit down on different proof that they had steered was being ready for public launch.

Maxwell recalled figuring out about Trump and presumably assembly him for the primary time in 1990, when her newspaper magnate father, Robert Maxwell, was the proprietor of the New York Daily News.

“I could have met Donald Trump at the moment, as a result of my father was pleasant with him and preferred him very a lot,” Maxwell stated, in accordance with the transcript.

Maxwell stated her father was keen on Trump’s then-wife, Ivana, “as a result of she was additionally from Czechoslovakia, the place my dad was from.” Maxwell, a onetime socialite who was convicted in 2021 of serving to lure teenage women to be sexually abused by Epstein, was interviewed over the course of two days final month by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche at a Florida courthouse.

After her interview, Maxwell was moved from the low-security federal jail in Florida the place she had been serving a 20-year sentence to a minimal safety jail camp in Texas. Neither her lawyer nor the federal Bureau of Prisons have defined the rationale for the transfer.

The Epstein case had lengthy captured public consideration partially due to the rich financer’s social connections through the years to outstanding figures together with Prince Andrew, former President Bill Clinton and Trump, who has stated his relationship with Epstein ended years earlier than. Epstein was arrested in 2019 on sex-trafficking costs, accused of sexually abusing dozens of teenage women, and was discovered useless a month later in a New York jail cell in what investigators described as a suicide.

The saga has consumed the Trump administration over the past month following an abrupt two-page announcement from the FBI and Justice Department that Epstein had killed himself regardless of conspiracy theories on the contrary, {that a} “shopper record” that Attorney General Pam Bondi had intimated was on her desk didn’t truly exist and that no extra paperwork from the high-profile investigation had been appropriate to be launched.

The announcement produced outrage from conspiracy theorists, on-line sleuths and Trump supporters who had been hoping to see proof of a authorities coverup, an expectation pushed partially by feedback from officers together with FBI Director Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, who on podcasts earlier than taking their present positions had repeatedly promoted the concept damaging particulars about outstanding folks had been being withheld.

Mr. Patel, as an illustration, stated in at the very least one podcast interview earlier than turning into director that Epstein’s “black ebook” was below the “direct management of the director of the FBI.” The administration had an early stumble in February when far-right influencers had been invited to the White House in February and offered by Ms. Bondi with binders marked “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” and “Declassified” that contained paperwork that had largely already been within the public area.

After the primary launch fell flat, Ms. Bondi stated officers had been poring over a “truckload” of beforehand withheld proof she stated had been handed over by the FBI and raised expectations of forthcoming releases.

But after a weekslong overview of proof within the authorities’s possession, the Justice Department stated final month that no “additional disclosure can be applicable or warranted.” The division famous that a lot of the fabric was positioned below seal by a court docket to guard victims and “solely a fraction” of it “would have been aired publicly had Epstein gone to trial.”

Faced with fury from the bottom, Mr. Trump sought to rapidly flip the web page, shutting down questioning of Bondi about Epstein at a White House Cabinet assembly and deriding as “weaklings” supporters who he stated had been falling for the “Jeffrey Epstein Hoax.” The kerfuffle additionally created bitter divisions inside the administration, as Bondi and Bongino angrily clashed at a White House assembly final month. Bongino was uncharacteristically silent on social media for a number of days after that.