This week, the late Jeffery Epstein’s longtime accomplice and close acquaintance Ghislaine Maxwell was found guilty on 5 out of 6 federal charges, including sex trafficking of a minor. It is likely that Maxwell will rightfully spend the rest of her life behind bars, as she faces 65 years in prison for her crimes.
Legal experts are already pressing prosecutors to make sure they don’t stop here, but rather continue their investigations into both Maxwell and Epstein to determine who else, if anyone, should be charged in these heinous crimes.
CNN legal analyst and a former prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, Elie Honig, said this certainly was not a two-person operation, stating, “I think prosecutors have a real obligation to dig all the way down to the bottom and bring anyone else who may have been part of this to justice.”
With Maxwell front and center in the news once again following her conviction, a report from earlier this year covering one of the many new books about the one-term, twice-impeached former has reminded us that Donald Trump may very well be one of those people.
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Journalist Michael Wolff alleged in his recent book, Landslide, that during the final days of Trump’s term in the White House, he apparently took a “sudden interest” in the prospect of pardoning Jeffery Epstein’s partner in crime, Ghislaine Maxwell, per a report on the book from Business Insider.
Wolff claimed that Trump turned his attention to the now-convicted child sex trafficker as he searched for potential pardon candidates when his term was coming to an end. Wolff said Trump was “bored” with the “process and details” that came with issuing a pardon, but his ego evidently outweighed his boredom as he was bound and determined to use his presidential pardoning powers to their fullest extent before he lost them.
The journalist claimed that the now-ex-president would regularly interrupt conversations to ask, “Who do you think should be pardoned? Give me one person — who’s your top pick?”
According to the book, Trump said of Maxwell, “Has she said anything about me? Is she going to talk? Will she roll on anybody?”
Trump was known to be pretty good friends with the late Epstein and has been proven to have been in contact with Maxwell at least once, thanks to a 2000 photo of him and his wife Melania with Epstein and Maxwell. Trump also sent Maxwell his well wishes directly following her arrest.
Axios reporter Jonathan Swan questioned Donald Trump as to why he would send well-wishes to a person like Maxwell, to which Trump responded, “She’s now in jail, so yeah, I wish her well. I would wish you well. I would wish a lot of people well. Good luck. Let them prove somebody was guilty.”
Ultimately, Trump did not pardon Maxwell before departing the White House, instead giving the pardons to his former chief strategist Steve Bannon and rapper Lil Wayne.
You can read the full report here.
Featured image via screen capture
