Ghislaine Maxwell, the imprisoned former girlfriend of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, is open to answering questions from Congress — however provided that she is granted immunity from future prosecution for her testimony, her attorneys stated Tuesday.
A spokeswoman for the committee that desires to interview her responded with a terse assertion saying it will not think about providing her immunity.
Maxwell’s attorneys additionally requested that they be supplied with any questions upfront and that any interview along with her be scheduled after her petition to the U.S. Supreme Courtroom to take up her case has been resolved.
The circumstances have been specified by a letter despatched by Maxwell’s attorneys to Rep. James Comer, the Republican chair of the Home Oversight Committee who final week issued a subpoena for her deposition on the Florida jail the place she is serving a 20-year-prison sentence on a conviction of conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse underage women.
The request to interview her is a part of a frenzied, renewed curiosity within the Epstein saga following the Justice Division’s July assertion that it will not be releasing any further information from the investigation, an abrupt announcement that shocked on-line sleuths, conspiracy theorists and components of President Donald Trump’s base who had been hoping to seek out proof of a authorities coverup.
Since then, the Trump administration has sought to current itself as selling transparency, with the division urging courts to unseal grand jury transcripts from the sex-trafficking investigation and Deputy Lawyer Common Todd Blanche interviewing Maxwell over the course of two days at a Florida courthouse final week.
In a letter Tuesday, Maxwell’s attorneys stated that although their preliminary intuition was for Maxwell to invoke her Fifth Modification proper in opposition to self-incrimination, they’re open to having her cooperate offered that lawmakers fulfill their request for immunity and different circumstances.
However the Oversight Committee appeared to reject that supply outright.
“The Oversight Committee will reply to Ms. Maxwell’s lawyer quickly, but it surely won’t think about granting congressional immunity for her testimony,” a spokesperson stated.
Individually, Maxwell’s attorneys have urged the Supreme Courtroom to assessment her conviction, saying she dd not obtain a good trial. In addition they say that a method she would testify “brazenly and actually, in public,” is within the occasion of a pardon by Trump, who has instructed reporters that such a transfer is inside his rights however that he has not been not requested to make it.
“She welcomes the chance to share the reality and to dispel the numerous misconceptions and misstatements which have plagued this case from the start,” he stated.
