Politics
Jeffrey Epstein accomplice says she never saw Trump in ‘any inappropriate setting’
- Maxwell says President Trump was “never inappropriate with anybody.”
- Trump faces political dissent over handling of Epstein case.
- Maxwell seeks clemency from Trump, moved to less-restrictive prison.
Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for helping Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse underage girls, told a top Justice Department official in July that she was not aware of any “client list” belonging to the late financier and never saw President Donald Trump behave inappropriately, according to a transcript of an interview released on Friday.
“I never witnessed the President in any inappropriate setting in any way,” Maxwell said, according to the transcript of her two-day interview last month with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. “The President was never inappropriate with anybody.”
During the interview, the imprisoned 63-year-old former British socialite also said she did not witness any sexual abuse by Epstein, her longtime boyfriend, and did not implicate any other prominent individuals in wrongdoing.
“He kept a lot to himself and he didn’t like to share,” Maxwell said, of Epstein. “He was not a sharer. Well, at least not with me.”
The Justice Department’s release of the transcripts and audio recordings of Maxwell’s interview comes amid intense public curiosity about Epstein, a multimillionaire who socialised with the cultural and political elite, and as Trump, a Republican, tries to tamp down a political crisis stemming from the Justice Department’s decision not to release files from its investigation of Epstein despite its earlier pledges to do so.
Maxwell spoke with Blanche on the condition that she not be prosecuted for any self-incriminating statements she were to make, but she could be prosecuted if she lied in the interview.
Maxwell was previously charged with perjury for lying in a 2016 deposition about her knowledge of Epstein’s alleged behavior, though prosecutors dropped those charges after a jury found her guilty of sex trafficking in 2021.
During Maxwell’s month-long trial in Manhattan, jurors heard emotional and explicit testimony from four women who said Maxwell recruited and groomed them for abuse by Epstein. Three of the four said Maxwell herself touched their bare breasts or took part in the encounters, which often began as massages.
Epstein died by suicide in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. He had pleaded not guilty.
Epstein’s death, coupled with his friendships with powerful people like Trump and former Democratic President Bill Clinton, has fueled conspiracy theories that other people were involved in his crimes, and that he was murdered to cover that up. No one other than he and Maxwell have been charged with crimes.
Blanche asked Maxwell if Epstein maintained any “client list.”
“There is no list that I am aware of,” Maxwell said.
Maxwell, who pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges brought against her in 2020, has asked the US Supreme Court to overturn her conviction. David Markus, Maxwell’s attorney, said in a statement on Friday that the interview supports Maxwell’s argument that she is innocent.
“She supported her answers with documents and other objective evidence. Her demeanor and credibility are clear for anyone to hear,” Markus said.
Markus has previously said Maxwell has not held discussions with Trump about a possible pardon, but that she would welcome “relief.”
‘Very cordial’
Blanche’s interview of Maxwell on July 24 and July 25 came as Trump sought to quell criticism from his conservative base of supporters and congressional Democrats over the Justice Department’s decision not to release the files.
A week after the interview, Maxwell was moved from a low-security prison facility in Florida to a less-restrictive prison camp in Texas.
Trump knew Epstein socially in the 1990s and early 2000s. During Maxwell’s trial the financier’s longtime pilot, Lawrence Visoski, testified that Trump flew on Epstein’s private plane multiple times. Trump has denied flying on the plane.
Maxwell told Blanche she never saw Trump receive a massage or engage in other inappropriate activity. Many of Epstein’s alleged victims say their unwanted sexual encounters with him began as massages.
“As far as I’m concerned, President Trump was always very cordial and very kind to me,” Maxwell said, according to the transcript. “And I just want to say that I admire his extraordinary achievement in becoming the President now.”
It is rare for a Justice Department official as senior as Blanche — who has also served as Trump’s personal lawyer — to directly interview a criminal defendant.
Blanche asked Maxwell about her and Epstein’s interactions with a spate of prominent Democrats including Bill and Hillary Clinton, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and billionaire Democratic donor George Soros. Maxwell did not implicate any of those individuals in wrongdoing.
Maxwell said she worked with Bill Clinton on his philanthropic endeavors, and that he used Epstein’s plane for a trip to Africa. But she said Clinton never visited Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands, where Epstein was accused of abusing some girls.
- Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand witness large scale devastation.
- At least 176 people perish in Thailand and three in Malaysia.
- Indonesia’s death toll reaches 502 with 508 more still missing.
PALEMBAYAN: Rescue teams in western Indonesia were battling on Monday to clear roads cut off by cyclone-induced landslides and floods, as improved weather revealed more of the scale of a disaster that has killed close to 700 people in Southeast Asia.
Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand have seen large scale devastation after a rare tropical storm formed in the Malacca Strait, fuelling torrential rains and wind gusts for a week that hampered efforts to reach people stranded by mudslides and high floodwaters.
At least 176 have been killed in Thailand and three in Malaysia, while the death toll climbed to 502 in Indonesia on Monday with 508 missing, according to official figures.
Under sunshine and clear blue skies in the town of Palembayan in Indonesia’s West Sumatra, hundreds of people were clearing mud, trees and wreckage from roads as some residents tried to salvage valuable items like documents and motorcycles from their damaged homes.
Men in camouflage outfits sifted through piles of mangled poles, concrete and sheet metal roofing as pickup trucks packed with people drove around looking for missing family members and handing out water to people, some trudging through knee-deep mud.
Months of adverse, deadly weather
The government’s recovery efforts include restoring roads, bridges and telecommunication services.
More than 28,000 homes have been damaged in Indonesia and 1.4 million people affected, according to the disaster agency.
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto visited the three affected provinces on Monday and praised residents for their spirit in the face of what he called a catastrophe.
“There are roads that are still cut off, but we’re doing everything we can to overcome difficulties,” he said in North Sumatra.
“We face this disaster with resilience and solidarity. Our nation is strong right now, able to overcome this.”
The devastation in the three countries follows months of adverse and deadly weather in Southeast Asia, including typhoons that have lashed the Philippines and Vietnam and caused frequent and prolonged flooding elsewhere.
Scientists have warned that extreme weather events will become more frequent as a result of global warming.
Marooned for days
In Thailand, the death toll rose slightly to 176 on Monday from flooding in eight southern provinces that affected about three million people and led to a major mobilisation of its military to evacuate critical patients from hospitals and reach people marooned for days by floodwaters.
In the hardest-hit province of Songkhla, where 138 people were killed, the government said 85% of water services had been restored and would be fully operational by Wednesday.
Much of Thailand’s recovery effort is focused on the worst-affected city Hat Yai, a southern trading hub which on November 21 received 335 mm (13 inches) of rain, its highest single-day tally in 300 years, followed by days of unrelenting downpours.
Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has set a timeline of seven days for residents to return to their homes, a government spokesperson said on Monday.
In neighbouring Malaysia, 11,600 people were still in evacuation centres, according to the country’s disaster agency, which said it was still on alert for a second and third wave of flooding.
- Ex-Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina, sister Rehana also sentenced.
- Case relates to illegal allocation of a plot of land: local media.
- Prosecutors highlight political influence, collusion abuse of power.
DHAKA: A Bangladesh court sentenced British parliamentarian and former minister Tulip Siddiq to two years in jail in a corruption case involving the alleged illegal allocation of a plot of land, local media reported.
The verdict was delivered in absentia as Siddiq, her aunt and former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, and Hasina’s sister Sheikh Rehana — all co-accused in the case — were not present in court.
Hasina was sentenced to five years in jail and Rehana to seven, the local media reports said.
Hasina, who fled to neighbouring India in August 2024 at the height of an uprising against her government, was sentenced to death last month over her government’s violent crackdown on demonstrators during the protests.
Last week, she was handed a combined 21-year prison sentence in other corruption cases.
Prosecutors said that the land was unlawfully allocated through political influence and collusion with senior officials, accusing the three powerful defendants of abusing their authority to secure the plot, measuring roughly 13,610 square feet, during Hasina’s tenure as prime minister.
Most of the 17 accused were absent when the judgement was pronounced.
Siddiq, who resigned in January as the UK’s minister responsible for financial services and anti-corruption efforts following scrutiny over her financial ties to Hasina, has previously dismissed the allegations as a “politically motivated smear”.
Britain does not currently have an extradition treaty with Bangladesh.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said his partner, Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis, is half-Indian and that one of their sons has the middle name “Sekhar” after Indian-American physicist and Nobel laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.
Speaking on Zerodha founder Nikhil Kamath’s “WTF is?” podcast, Musk said: “I’m not sure if you know this, but my partner Shivon is half Indian,” adding: “One of my sons with her, his middle name is Sekhar after Chandrasekhar.”
Musk also spoke about Zilis’s background when asked where she grew up, saying she was given up for adoption as a baby and raised in Canada. “She grew up in Canada. She was given up for adoption when she was a baby. I think her father was like an exchange student at the university or something like that… I’m not sure the exact details,” he said.
Zilis joined Musk’s AI company, Neuralink, in 2017 and is currently the Director of Operations and Special Projects. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Philosophy from Yale University. Zilis has four children with Musk — twins Strider and Azure, daughter Arcadia and son Seldon Lycurgus.
Earlier this year, in March, it emerged that Musk had another child, his 14th, with Zilis.
“Discussed with Elon and, in light of beautiful Arcadia’s birthday, we felt it was better to also just share directly about our wonderful and incredible son Seldon Lycurgus,” Zilis said in a post on X, without saying when the child was born. Musk responded with a heart.
Her announcement came two weeks after conservative influencer Ashley St Clair said that she also recently had a child with Musk.
Appearing on the latest episode of Kamath’s podcast, Musk also said that America has “been an immense beneficiary of talent from India, but that seems to be changing now”.
His comments come at a time when the American dream for thousands of Indians is turning sour due to rising US visa restrictions and policy unpredictability.
— With additional input from Reuters
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