Questions have been raised on Capitol Hill over the transfer of jailed Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell to a minimum security prison. A congressman investigating the scandal said moving the convicted British socialite to a less restrictive facility “seemed too coincidental” shortly after she was interviewed by then deputy attorney general Todd Blanche.
Mr Blanche meeting Maxwell over two days last July raised eyebrows at the time, with lawyers casting doubt on the credibility of any information she gave because of the strong motivation to seek leniency. In subsequently released transcripts, she repeatedly denied witnessing any sexually inappropriate behaviour involving Donald Trump, and praised the former president as a “gentleman in all respects”.
A short time after the interviews, Maxwell was moved from a low-security federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas. Mr Blanche later defended the transfer, highlighting threats made against her. Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence in the US for luring young girls for Epstein to sexually abuse.
Questions over the treatment of Maxwell in jail were raised again after former attorney general Pam Bondi gave evidence behind closed doors to the House of Representatives Oversight Committee about the handling of the Epstein investigation and the bungled release of documents. In her opening statement, Ms Bondi said it was her deputy, Mr Blanche, who is now the acting attorney general, who had overseen the process to publish the case files.
Ms Bondi also distanced herself from Maxwell’s jail transfer, according to Congressman Suhas Subramanyam, who sits on the committee. Speaking outside the hearing, Mr Subramanyam said: “She said she wasn’t involved at all in the process of moving her … to another prison, but she wasn’t sure if that new prison was even a lower security prison, which factually it is. … It seemed too coincidental.”
Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the committee, said: “We asked questions about Ghislaine Maxwell and the transfer and again she referred those questions to Todd Blanche and the Bureau of Prisons. … Ms Bondi claims to have no knowledge of the actual transfer, no knowledge that it was a less secure prison, and didn’t know about it until she found out after the fact.”
