On his way out the door to a weekend golf trip that’s set to cost American taxpayers at least $10 million, Trump stopped to answer a couple questions from reporters ― and he was awfully cagey when asked about Ghislaine Maxwell.
Asked if he would pardon or commute the sentence of Maxwell, sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s onetime girlfriend, Trump sure didn’t say “no.”
“I’m allowed to do it,” he told reporters. He then claimed that “it’s something I’ve not thought about.”
Presumably, Trump wouldn’t pardon Maxwell, who was convicted for helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls, unless it benefited him personally — perhaps by buying her silence or otherwise somehow distracting the country from his own past relationship with Epstein.
Trump deflected further when pushed on the subject.
“I don’t want to talk about that,” he said.
Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence at a federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche met with her on Thursday in an attempt to quell a firestorm over the Trump administration’s backtracking on promises to release additional records from the Epstein investigation.
“What I do want to say is that Blanche is a great attorney,” Trump told reporters.
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Then he launched into one of his classic redirects and encouraged the press not to investigate his own connection to Epstein, but everyone else’s. He proceeded to list names that may or may not be in the Epstein files and speculated about “hedge fund guys” and former President Bill Clinton going to Epstein’s island.
In the same back and forth, Trump also denied that he’d written a lewd birthday message for Epstein that featured a drawing of a naked woman and remarked how “enigmas never age” while wishing that “may every day be another wonderful secret.” The Wall Street Journal published a copy of the note last week.