The sex trafficker who Donald Trump is considering pardoning repeatedly lied about her years-long role in Jeffrey Epstein’s pedophile operation and should not be trusted to tell the truth, according to an official U.S. government assessment.
As the president refuses to rule out striking a deal with Ghislaine Maxwell to mitigate the firestorm over the Epstein files, a 2022 Department of Justice sentencing memo slammed the convicted child abuser. It warned of the lengths she would go to reduce her sentence.
“In short, the defendant apparently decides when she wishes to disclose facts to the Court, and those facts shift when it serves the defendant’s interests,” says the memo.
“If anything stands out from the defendant’s sentencing submission, it is her complete failure to address her offense conduct and her utter lack of remorse. Instead of showing even a hint of acceptance of responsibility, the defendant makes a desperate attempt to cast blame wherever else she can.”
The memo was issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York after Maxwell was convicted on federal charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy for helping Epstein recruit and abuse underage girls.
But the document has become pertinent again in recent days, after Trump—who has found himself embroiled in a huge political quagmire over the Epstein files—ordered Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to speak to Maxwell in the hope of finding an off-ramp to the saga.
Blanche, who represented Trump in his criminal trial last year, spent two days meeting with Maxwell last week, where, according to her lawyer David Oscar Markus, they discussed “more than 100 different people” connected to Epstein.
One of those connections is likely to be the president, who spent years partying with the disgraced financier but insists he had nothing to do with his sex trafficking operation.
One of Maxwell’s victims, Virginia Roberts (later Virginia Giuffre), was recruited from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, where she worked at the time as a 17-year-old.
On Monday, Markus said Maxwell would appeal her conviction not just to the Supreme Court, but to Trump directly, asking the president to recognize that she was “a scapegoat” for Epstein’s crimes.
But the DOJ memo suggests otherwise, outlining the lengths Maxwell went to befriend, recruit, and traffic vulnerable girls, some as young as 14 and all from single-mother households, to Epstein’s properties in the U.S, the U.K., and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
“But her abusive conduct did not end with the grooming and manipulation of the victims. She also participated in the sexual abuse of her victims,” the memo says.
Maxwell also repeatedly lied under oath in a civil deposition in connection with a lawsuit brought by one of the victims, the memo says.
She then lied again by claiming she had broken away from Epstein in 2002 (when flight records show she flew on his private jet repeatedly between 2003 and 2005) and also about her finances (records show Epstein transferred millions into her account).
“The defendant’s attempt to cast aspersions on the Government for prosecuting her, and her claim that she is being held responsible for Epstein’s crimes, are both absurd and offensive,” the memo says.
“She should be held accountable for her disturbing role in an extensive child exploitation scheme.”
Trump, however, has not ruled out pardoning Maxwell, or striking some kind of deal to reduce her sentence.
“I’m allowed to give her a pardon, but nobody has approached me, nobody has asked me for it,” he said Monday.
“It’s in the news, but right now it would be inappropriate to talk about it.”
Such a move would risk infuriating the president’s MAGA base, and Republicans more broadly, many of whom loathe the convicted felon for her role in assisting Epstein’s heinous crimes.
“If you’re asking my opinion, I think 20 years was a pittance,” Speaker Mike Johnson told Meet the Press over the weekend. “I think she should have a life sentence, at least.”
Former Trump White House aide Alyssa Farah Griffin was even more scathing.
“There‘s a special place in hell for women who would help men abuse younger women,” she told CNN.
And former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger said Trump had not ruled out pardoning Maxwell “because she knows things. She knows about Trump—and if Trump pardons her, she won’t talk.”
“How are you going to spin this one?” Kinzinger, a never-Trumper, asked MAGA supporters in a video posted online.
“Do we care about child sex trafficking or don’t we? Answer that, guys.”
