Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell has agreed to testify to Congress about his sex crimes, provided she is granted immunity from further conviction and can delay her evidence until after her appeal.
Days after her secret meeting with Donald Trump’s Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the convicted child sex trafficker has agreed to cooperate with Hill investigators as long as they meet her demands.
But in a notable move, the 63-year-old has also said she is willing to testify unconditionally if she is granted clemency–something Trump has not ruled out giving her.
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Maxwell’s demands are a shift from last week, when her lawyers indicated she may decline to cooperate with the subpoena from the House Oversight and Government Committee.
But in a letter obtained Tuesday by the Daily Beast, her legal team says that “after further reflection, we would like to find a way to cooperate with Congress if a fair and safe path forward can be established.”
“Public reports—including your own statements—indicate that the Committee intends to question Ms. Maxwell in prison and without a grant of immunity. Those are non-starters,” Maxwell’s lawyers said in the letter to committee chairman James Comer.
“Ms. Maxwell cannot risk further criminal exposure in a politically charged environment without formal immunity.”
In addition, the letter says, the Florida prison where Maxwell is held is not “conducive to eliciting truthful and complete testimony” due to the potential for leaks.
Therefore, she wants to relocate the deposition and will only testify after her Supreme Court appeal has run its course, her lawyers said. They have also asked for the committee’s questions in advance, telling Comer: “Years after the original events and well beyond the criminal trial, this process cannot become a game of cat-and-mouse. Surprise questioning would be both inappropriate and unproductive.”
The committee is yet to formally respond to Maxwell’s lawyers but has already signalled it will not grant Congressional immunity for her testimony.
The push to get Maxwell to testify emerged last week amid mounting pressure to release materials related to the larger Epstein investigation.
But the vote to subpoena her added to the firestorm Trump has faced this month, ever since a Justice Department memo declared there was no evidence to suggest that Epstein was murdered or that he had a “client list”-something that many Trump supporters have long believed.
In a bid to mitigate the crisis and get ahead of the committee’s inquiries, the president deployed Blanche, his former personal attorney, to meet Maxwell last week.
According to her lawyer, David Oscar Markus, Maxwell answered all the questions put to her and discussed with Blanche “more than 100” people connected to the case.
Blanche still hasn’t spoken about his meetings, and on Tuesday morning, he mysteriously failed to show up to an open press conference for an opioid-related announcement alongside Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy.
But the issue remains an ongoing headache for Trump, who was a known associate of Epstein and Maxwell, and has repeatedly refused to rule out pardoning her.
Epstein died in a Manhattan jail in 2019 as he was awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges involving underage girls.
Maxwell was subsequently convicted in 2021 on federal charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy for helping her former boyfriend recruit and abuse underage girls.
She was sentenced to 20 years in prison but is now appealing her sentence, insisting she did not receive a fair trial.
“Ms. Maxwell should never have been charged in the first place,” her lawyers said.
“In 2008, the United States government promised, in writing, that she would not be prosecuted. It broke that promise only after Mr. Epstein died in 2019—at which point Ms. Maxwell became a convenient scapegoat."
