Takeaways from Justice Department interviews of Epstein's former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell

In the hundreds of pages of transcripts from Justice Department interviews of Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein spoke glowingly of President Donald Trump, called him a “gentleman in all respects” and describing him as “friendly” with Epstein.

Both Trump's supporters and his Democratic opponents have clamored for documents about the case to be made public. In the transcripts released Friday, Maxwell also details what she knew of Epstein's interactions with other high-profile men, including former President Bill Clinton, current Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Britain's Prince Andrew, saying she never observed untoward behavior from any of them.

Here are key takeaways:

What documents were released by the government

The transcripts are from interviews Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche conducted with Maxwell last month. The sit-down came as the Trump administration scrambled to present itself as transparent amid backlash among even some of Trump’s most loyal supporters over a perceived broken promise to release more information on Epstein's case.

Trump has faced questions about a long-ago friendship with Epstein and as his administration has endured continued scrutiny over its handling of evidence from the sex-trafficking case.

The ire peaked when Attorney General Pam Bondi said last month that Epstein did not leave behind a “client list,” after earlier suggesting it was on her desk, and said no other evidence would be released.

Blanche later interviewed the imprisoned Maxwell at a Florida courthouse.

What Maxwell said about Trump

The transcripts show Maxwell repeatedly denying under questioning from Blanche that she had observed Trump engaged in any form of sexual behavior

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, saying that her late father had been fond of Trump’s then-wife Ivana “because she was also from Czechoslovakia where my dad was from.”

“As far as I’m concerned, President Trump was always very cordial and very kind to me,” Maxwell said. “I admire his extraordinary achievement in becoming the president now. And I like him, and I’ve always liked him. So that is the sum and substance of my entire relationship with him.”

Maxwell told Blanche she didn’t know how Epstein and Trump met nor how they became friends.

“I certainly saw them together and I remember the few times I observed them together, but they were friendly,” she said. “I mean, they seemed friendly.”

Maxwell said she recalled only seeing Epstein and Trump in social settings, not private settings. Asked by Blanche if she ever observed Trump receiving a massage, she answered: “Never.”

“I actually never saw the President in any type of massage setting,” Maxwell said. “I never witnessed the President in any inappropriate setting in any way. The President was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.”

When Maxwell last saw Trump

Maxwell estimated that she hadn’t seen Trump since the mid-2000s, again in a social setting. Asked if she ever heard Epstein or anyone else say Trump “had done anything inappropriate with masseuses” or anyone else in their orbit, Maxwell replied: “Absolutely never, in any context.”

Maxwell said she and Epstein would go to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, often separately, though she didn’t say specifically when that was. She said she “loved going there” and that Epstein would “maybe go himself to the spa. I certainly did.”

Maxwell said RFK Jr. and Epstein were friends

While being quizzed about which powerful men were friends with Epstein, Maxwell told Blanche that Epstein did know Robert Kennedy Jr., who leads the Health and Human Services Department under Trump. Maxwell said they went on a trip together “dinosaur bone hunting in the Dakotas” in the early 1990s.

Asked by Blanche if she had any recollection of any inappropriate behavior involving Kennedy on the trip, Maxwell replied: “I never saw anything inappropriate with Mr. Kennedy.”

What she said about Epstein and Prince Andrew

Maxwell spoke favorably of Britain’s Prince Andrew and dismissed as “rubbish” the late Virginia Giuffre’s claim that she was paid to have a relationship with Andrew and that he had sex with her at Maxwell’s London home. She denied introducing Epstein to Prince Andrew, using a British idiom to describe how she felt they wouldn’t have anything in common.

“I couldn’t imagine them being friends. Two chalk and cheeses would never — I mean, for real, there’s nothing there to connect them,” she told Blanche.

Maxwell questioned the details of Giuffre’s claim, telling Blanche that she wasn’t even in London when the purported sex happened. Rather, she said, she was in the country celebrating her mother’s 80th birthday.

Maxwell said her home is so tiny — about 900 square feet (83.6 square meters) with tight quarters — that it would’ve been physically impossible to have sex in the bathroom, as Giuffre claimed.

Giuffre became an advocate for sex trafficking survivors after emerging as a central figure in Epstein’s prolonged downfall. The prince settled with Giuffre in 2022 for an undisclosed sum, agreeing to make a “substantial donation” to her survivors’ organization.

Maxwell discussed other high-profile men

Asked about trips she went on with high-profile men, Maxwell said it was difficult to remember details, as they became a “blur.”

“And after a while, you know, in the incredible job that you have, all of you, that when you’re so high pressured and you’re spending so much time with extraordinary people like you do with President Trump, it — it can blur,” she said. “It just does.”

Blanche pressed Maxwell on whether she knew certain high-profile names, such as Elon Musk and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Maxwell said she met Musk around 2010 or 2011 during an event for the co-founder of Google that Epstein did not attend and then saw Musk again later at the Oscars.

Maxwell told Blanche she was friends with Cuomo’s ex-wife, Kerry, but had only met him a few times and she didn’t think Cuomo knew Epstein. Maxwell said she had no recollection of either man flying on Epstein’s plane or ever visiting his homes.

Maxwell’s interview wasn’t only helpful to Trump, but also another one-time White House occupant with Epstein ties: former President Bill Clinton.

Maxwell told Blanche that Clinton was initially her friend, not Epstein’s, and that she never saw him receive a massage — nor did she believe he ever did.

The only times they were together, she said, were the two dozen or so times they traveled on Epstein’s plane.

“That would’ve been the only time that I think that President Clinton could have even received a massage,” Maxwell said. “And he didn’t, because I was there.”

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Michael R. Sisak, Adriana Gomez Licon, Alanna Durkin Richer and Matt Brown contributed reporting.

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Kinnard can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP