The US Justice Department has released a transcript of an interview with Ghislaine Maxwell – the jailed ex-girlfriend of paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Maxwell said in the interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche last month that she never saw US President Donald Trump in an “inappropriate setting”.
According to the transcript, Maxwell said: “I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way. The president was never inappropriate with anybody.”
Maxwell also recalled knowing about Mr 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.
“I may have met Donald Trump at that time, because my father was friendly with him and liked him very much,” Maxwell said, according to the transcript.
Maxwell said her father was fond of Mr Trump’s then-wife, Ivana, “because she was also from Czechoslovakia, where my dad was from.”
She was sentenced in the US in June 2022 to 20 years in prison following her conviction on five counts of sex trafficking for luring young girls to massage rooms for Epstein to abuse. She has asked the US Supreme Court to overturn her conviction.
Epstein, 66, was found dead in his cell at a Manhattan federal jail in August 2019 as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide.
Jeffrey Epstein. File pic: New York State Sex Offender Registry via AP
His case has generated endless attention and conspiracy theories due to his and Maxwell’s links to famous people like royals, presidents and billionaires, including Mr Trump. No one other than Epstein and Maxwell has been charged with crimes.
Mr Trump knew Epstein socially in the 1990s and early 2000s. During Maxwell’s trial in 2021, Epstein’s longtime pilot, Lawrence Visoski, said Mr Trump flew on Epstein’s private plane several times. Mr Trump has denied flying on the plane.
Maxwell said in her interview with the Justice Department that she never saw Mr Trump receive a massage.
She told Mr Blanche that Mr Trump “was always very cordial and very kind to me”, adding: “And I just want to say that I admire his extraordinary achievement in becoming the president now.”
The release of the transcript comes after Mr Trump has faced criticism from Republican supporters and Democrats over his Justice Department’s decision not to release further details relating to Epstein, after the now US president promised to do so during the election.
Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell
The Justice Department previously said a review of the Epstein case had found “no incriminating ‘client list'” and “no credible evidence” the jailed financier had blackmailed famous men.
In the transcript of the department’s interview with Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend said that she is not aware of any Epstein ‘client list’.
After her interview in July, Maxwell was moved to a minimum-security prison camp in Bryan, Texas, by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) after she was held at a low-security prison in Tallahassee, Florida, that housed men and women.
Read more from Sky News:
Tour bus crash kills and injures several people
Trump critic has home raided by the FBI
The Texas camp houses solely female prisoners, the majority of whom are serving time for nonviolent offences and white-collar crimes.
Neither Maxwell’s lawyer nor the BOP gave a reason for the move.
Maxwell’s legal team have maintained that she was wrongly prosecuted and denied a fair trial, and have floated the idea of a pardon from Mr Trump.
Ghislaine Maxwell with Jeffrey Epstein. Pic: US Department of Justice
The president said earlier this month that “nobody” had asked him about pardoning Maxwell, but insisted that he has “the right to do it”.
Mr Trump said: “I’m allowed to do it, but nobody’s asked me to do it. I know nothing about it. I don’t know anything about the case, but I know I have the right to do it. I have the right to give pardons, I’ve given pardons to people before, but nobody’s even asked me to do it.”
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.
Please refresh the page for the fullest version.
You can receive breaking news alerts on a smartphone or tablet via the Sky News app. You can also follow us on WhatsApp and subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with the latest news.
