The Justice Department on Friday, August 22, released transcripts of interviews its No. 2 official did with Jeffrey Epstein's imprisoned former girlfriend as the Trump administration scrambles to present itself as transparent amid a fierce backlash over an earlier refusal to disclose a trove of records from the sex-trafficking case.
The disclosure represents the latest Trump administration effort to repair self-inflicted political wounds after failing to deliver on expectations that its own officials had created through conspiracy theories and bold pronouncements that never came to pass. By making public two days worth of interviews, officials appear to be hoping to at least temporarily keep at bay sustained anger from President Donald Trump's base even as they continue to sit on other evidence they had suggested was being prepared for public release.
Maxwell recalled knowing about 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 Trump's then-wife, Ivana, "because she was also from Czechoslovakia, where my dad was from."
Maxwell, a onetime socialite who was convicted in 2021 of helping lure teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein, was interviewed over the course of two days last month by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche at a Florida courthouse.
After her interview, Maxwell was moved from the low-security federal prison in Florida where she had been serving a 20-year sentence to a minimum security prison camp in Texas. Neither her lawyer nor the federal Bureau of Prisons have explained the reason for the move.
The saga has consumed the Trump administration over the last month following an abrupt two-page announcement from the FBI and Justice Department that Epstein had killed himself despite conspiracy theories to the contrary, that a "client list" that Attorney General Pam Bondi had intimated was on her desk did not actually exist and that no additional documents from the high-profile investigation were suitable to be released.
The announcement produced outrage from conspiracy theorists, online sleuths and Trump supporters who had been hoping to see proof of a government coverup, an expectation driven in part by comments from officials including FBI Director Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, who on podcasts before taking their current positions had repeatedly promoted the idea that damaging details about prominent people were being withheld. Patel, for instance, said in at least one podcast interview before becoming director that Epstein's "black book" was under the "direct control of the director of the FBI."
The administration had an early stumble in February when far-right influencers were invited to the White House in February and provided by Bondi with binders marked "The Epstein Files: Phase 1" and "Declassified" that contained documents that had largely already been in the public domain. After the first release fell flat, Bondi said officials were poring over a "truckload" of previously withheld evidence she said had been handed over by the FBI and raised expectations of forthcoming releases.
But after a weekslong review of evidence in the government's possession, the Justice Department said last month that no "further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted." The department noted that much of the material was placed under seal by a court to protect victims and "only a fraction" of it "would have been aired publicly had Epstein gone to trial."
Faced with fury from the base, Trump sought to quickly turn the page, shutting down questioning of Bondi about Epstein at a White House Cabinet meeting and deriding as "weaklings" supporters who he said were falling for the "Jeffrey Epstein Hoax."
The kerfuffle also created bitter divisions within the administration, as Bondi and Bongino angrily clashed at a White House meeting last month. Bongino was uncharacteristically silent on social media for several days after that.