Trump administration debating releasing transcript of Ghislaine Maxwell interview with DOJ, sources say
ByAlayna Treene
Paula Reid
Kristen Holmes
Updated 1 hr 24 min ago
This undated trial evidence image obtained December 8, 2021, from the US District Court for the Southern District of New York shows British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell and US financier Jeffrey Epstein in Queen's log cabin at Balmoral.
US District Court for the Southern District of New York
The Justice Department has an audio recording of the interview it conducted with Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell last month, and the administration is considering releasing a transcript of the interview publicly, three senior administration officials told CNN.
The existence of the recording has not been previously reported and comes at a time when the Trump administration is facing pressure to be more transparent with the information it has related to Epstein. Administration officials are currently discussing whether to release the transcript of Maxwell’s interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the three senior administration officials told CNN.The administration has been transcribing and digitizing the recording. Portions of the transcript that could reveal sensitive details like victim names would also have to be redacted, one of the officials said.
As of Tuesday morning, the discussions over potential publication of the transcripts and the audio were ongoing. “A final decision has not been made,” one of the officials said. Another official told CNN that, within the White House, some of the conversation has focused on whether making the details from the interview public would bring the Epstein controversy back to the surface at a time when many officials close to President Donald Trump believe the story has largely died down.
However, the officials, many of whom have been frustrated with the rollout of the information regarding the Epstein case, have been eager to take control of the narrative and optics around the issue.
Two of the administration officials said if they were to release the audio and transcript, it would likely be done sooner rather than later. One said the release could be several weeks from now, depending on what the most senior-level officials within the West Wing and Justice Department decide. It was not immediately clear whether the White House and DOJ were aligned on the issue.
“This is nothing more than CNN trying desperately to create news out of old news. [Trump] already addressed this issue in an interview with Newsmax, a real news outlet that routinely gets better ratings than CNN,” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told CNN.
CNN has reached out to the Justice Department. A lawyer for Maxwell declined to comment.
Blanche interviewed Maxwell at the US attorney’s office in Tallahassee last month over a period of two days. Maxwell was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in federal prison for carrying out a years-long scheme with Epstein to groom and sexually abuse underage girls. She has continued to appeal her conviction, including with the Supreme Court.
Last week, Maxwell was moved from a Florida federal prison to a lower-security federal prison camp in Texas, a relatively uncommon move as those convicted of sex offenses are almost always deemed too high of a risk to public safety.
As Trump has faced mounting pressure from his base for transparency, the White House has repeatedly said the DOJ should release all “credible evidence” in the Epstein files.
Asked about Blanche’s meeting with Maxwell last week, Trump again said he’d like to see everything in the files released. “We’d like to release everything, but we don’t want people to get hurt that shouldn’t be hurt, and I would assume that was why he was there,” Trump told Newsmax on Friday.
The president said he hadn’t spoken to Blanche about his meetings with Maxwell and didn’t know when that information would be made public. “I haven’t spoken about it, but he’s a very talented guy, Todd Blanche, and a very straight shooter, and I think he probably wanted to know, you know, just to get a feeling of it,” Trump said.
CNN previously reported that a senior Trump administration official stated that the president is not currently considering clemency for Maxwell, though he has repeatedly left the door open on the matter in recent weeks, saying he’s “allowed to do it.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
