The following is a lightly edited transcript of the July 28 episode of the
Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
The Jeffrey Epstein scandal keeps taking new twists and turns. As of this recording, Ghislaine Maxwell, the former partner of Epstein who was serving 20 years for sex trafficking, has been in talks with the Justice Department, supposedly divulging what she knows about his activities. Maxwell’s attorney has just confirmed that she’s seeking a pardon from President Trump, which raises the possibility that she will exonerate him in exchange for that pardon. But we’ve been wondering: Isn’t it highly likely that we will, in fact, sooner or later know what’s in the Epstein files? We think yes—because there are all sorts of ways more information can come out. And once we do know that information, what happens then? Philip Rotner, a lawyer, just wrote a good piece for The Bulwark pulling on a lot of these different threads. So we’re talking to him about all of this today. Thanks for coming on, Philip.
Philip Rotner: Thanks for having me, Greg. I appreciate it.
Sargent: So MAGA spent years screaming for the release of information collected in the course of investigating Jeffrey Epstein, who was arrested for sex trafficking in 2019. They thought that these files, as they’re being called, would reveal extensive evidence of Democratic pedophilia and so forth. But once Trump took over, his top officials looked at that information and decided not to release it. Now Ghislaine Maxwell has entered the story. She met with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche twice, and Blanche just happens to be Trump’s former personal attorney. Phil, can you very briefly tell us who Ghislaine Maxwell is and bring us up to the present?
Rotner: Ghislaine Maxwell was a British socialite—part of the Maxwell family—and she was a very close associate of Jeffrey Epstein. In fact, many of Epstein’s victims have described her as something of a procurer for him. She would round up young women to come and give Epstein massages and perform sex acts. And according to some of the victims, she actually participated physically in some of those acts. She was convicted in 2021 of a variety of actions connected to Epstein: sex trafficking of a minor, transporting a minor, conspiracy to commit sex trafficking, and so on. And she’s currently serving a 20-year sentence.
Sargent: That brings us up to the present. Why exactly is Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche meeting with Maxwell? What is he ostensibly trying to find out, and what is he actually trying to do?
Rotner: So it’s good that you broke it down into those two pieces because there are, indeed, two pieces. Ostensibly, he’s conducting some investigation in response to the hue and cry coming originally from the MAGA right and now from everywhere to release more information about Epstein and the Epstein files. What I believe he’s really trying to do is create the appearance of an investigation. It looks very much like a sham to me. He is Trump’s lawyer. He says even recently that he continues to have an attorney-client relationship with Donald Trump. He’s not only was Trump’s lawyer but he also reports to Donald Trump now. And he’s the one who’s going out to talk to Ghislaine Maxwell to unearth evidence that clearly involves Donald Trump—at least as a witness and maybe even as a subject. So it just seems completely phony, and any pretext that there’s a real investigation going on, I think, is just that.
Sargent: So Philip, we know Trump is in the Epstein files in some capacity or other. That’s been reported now. Now we don’t know what that exactly means. It could be pretty innocent: He maybe was a longtime associate of Epstein but never participated in anything criminal or hideously immoral like the stuff Epstein did. Or potentially maybe there was some dirty stuff going on there. We just don’t know. When Todd Blanche goes to meet with Maxwell ostensibly as the deputy attorney general, what does he pretending to be going there to be asking her about? And if he were actually interested in finding out real information, what would he actually ask her?
Rotner: Well, I think what he is ostensibly asking her about is not necessarily focused—at least not primarily—on Donald Trump. I think what he is supposed to be talking to her about is to see if there is any information she can provide [that indicates] complicity by anyone in Jeffrey Epstein’s really despicable conduct with young women. I think the subtext here is Trump, but ostensible point of this interview is to gather information to see if anything needs to be followed up. After all, these girls were trafficked. Epstein was accused of trafficking, and Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of trafficking. They must have been trafficked to somebody. And one would suppose that Maxwell would have a lot of information about to whom these girls were trafficked.
Sargent: Right. So basically what’s going on here is Blanche is trying to make it look as if he’s going down there to find out what’s really happened with Epstein over the years, right? Because there’s this enormous hue and cry, as you said earlier, demanding to know that. But there’s no actual indication that he really wants to get a full accounting of what Epstein did, especially if it touches on Trump. Is that about right?
Rotner: I think it’s about right, and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that he’s the one that’s doing it. A lot of commentators have pointed out that this is something that would normally be done by a line attorney, not even the head attorney of a New York office or a Florida office. And in this case, it’s the deputy attorney general. And it’s not only the deputy attorney general but it’s the deputy attorney general who’s represented Donald Trump in at least four matters—one of which, like the Epstein matter, had to do with sexual misconduct, or at least claims of illicit sexual involvement. And it’s just odd that they would send somebody who’s so compromised, so conflicted to do this job. The fact that they have just raises questions. And to my thinking, it just stinks to high hell.
Sargent: Right. And making it even worse, we also have it confirmed that Maxwell is seeking a pardon from Trump. The president was asked about this and he just said breezily that he does have the power to pardon her. Then we heard from Maxwell’s lawyer. This comes after Todd Blanche question her for the second day, and Maxwell’s lawyer said this.
Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyer David Oscar Markus (audio voiceover): We haven’t spoken to the president or anybody about a pardon just yet. And listen, the president this morning said he had the power to do so. We hope he exercises that power in the right and just way.
Sargent: Now the idea that Trump would be pardoning Maxwell in a “right and just way” as if Trump engages in moral deliberations on decisions like these in any sense at all is just laughable. But Phil, what do you think’s going on here with the pardon piece of this?
Rotner: Well, I think that that’s from Maxwell’s point of view. I think that’s what the whole thing is about. I think that she is going to do and say anything that she can do and say to help her get a pardon. She’s already talking in Trumpspeak. They’re already talking about how very unfair the trial was. They’re talking about a supposed broken promise. That was, by the way, not made to her; if it was made to anyone, it was made to Jeffrey Epstein, not to go after co-conspirators. But they’re setting up what I would call a quasi-legal argument—that there was something wrong with her conviction, and that Trump can and should remedy that by a commutation or pardon or something of that ilk.
Sargent: So is there a scenario here in which she exonerates Trump completely? She tells Todd Blanche that Trump never did anything remotely wrong. Todd Blanche can then put that out in some way or other. Maybe Maxwell fingers a few high-level Democrats or billionaire liberal donors or something like that. Then she gets pardoned, and Trump and Maxwell both win in a kind of trade. Is that actually a plausible scenario?
Rotner: Sure. We know Maxwell has lied in the past about her involvement with Epstein, and she has absolutely nothing to gain by saying anything that would harm Trump in any way at all. Everything points to her interest being to exonerate Donald Trump in exchange for a pardon. She may not get the pardon. I don’t know how far their discussions are, but I know one thing: She won’t get the pardon if instead of exonerating Trump, she points the finger at him. That’s death to her hopes for a pardon. So it’s pretty clear where she’s going to go on this.
Sargent: Well, Philip, this whole thing is almost impossible to believe. Is there a scenario where Todd Blanche is going down there to talk to Maxwell precisely in order to get something exonerating of Trump from her? Is it possible that he could be quite that corrupt—that the deputy attorney general would be functioning purely as the president’s personal attorney in this scenario?
Rotner: Well, it’s a question of how he’s functioning internally. It’s hard to read into his mind. I’m sure he would never say to anyone, probably including Donald Trump, because that would be a record of saying something incriminating. He’s not going to say to anyone, I’m going to go down there and get her to exonerate you so that you can give her a pardon. But the charade is just so transparent. And the comments from Maxwell’s attorney … on that point, so clear that this is about pardon. That’s what this interview is about. It’s about a pardon, and the rest of it is just window dressing.
Sargent: Maxwell is actively hoping that Todd Blanche is there in order to get her to exonerate Trump in exchange for which Trump gives her a pardon. That’s what she’s hoping for, right?
Rotner: Clearly. And do we think for even a moment that Todd Blanche thinks he’s going to go and generate evidence incriminating Donald Trump?
Sargent: Of course not.
Rotner: That’s just ridiculous. So we’ve got a one-way investigation. There’s two things that can happen. He gets nothing out of Maxwell. She’s difficult. She’s not communicative. That’s one thing that could happen. The other thing that happens is that she says, Oh, Donald Trump never was involved in any of the misconduct with younger women, and, I don’t know anything about that. I think that’s where she’s going to land. I also think that it’s important to set the level here as to what we know about Trump’s involvement with Epstein. We know, on the one end, he wasn’t just a casual acquaintance who had the misfortune to run across Epstein at a party or some kind of political event. And on the other end, we know that at least there is no publicly known information that he participated in any criminal activity with Epstein.
That leaves a vast middle ground. And we know that Trump is in that middle ground. We know that he was more than a casual acquaintance. We know that his acquaintance included being in the company of young women, ogling at them. And we know that he praised Epstein for his inclination to like young women and even suggested that they shared that in common. So there is a big middle ground here that makes Trump more than just the guy who had the bad luck to cross paths with an evildoer, but we don’t have either end. We know that one end is not true. We know that it’s not just a casual ran-into-him-somewhere. The other end, we don’t know. We just don’t know how far down that line Donald Trump went. That is exactly what a real Justice Department investigation would be trying to find out.
Sargent: That’s the thing. This is the deputy attorney general of the United States. He’s not supposed to be going down there for the explicit purpose of exonerating Trump.
Rotner: Yeah, I would only quarrel with the term “explicit” because he is not going to be explicit about it.
Sargent: Right. Philip, is there a scenario where Republicans bring Maxwell in to testify to Congress? I have to think that if so, you might see Democrats questioning her under oath as well. Couldn’t they ask her under oath to come clean about what’s in the information involving Trump or whatever else?
Rotner: The short answer is yes, there is a scenario where they bring her in. And I, in fact, think that that’s likely. The question about what the Democrats might ask her—we’ve seen so many instances of committee testimony, and we know how easy it is to evade and dodge questions. Ghislaine Maxwell is going to have to weigh two things. She’s going to have to weigh the really remote possibility that she is too vague or somehow her testimony gets referred for perjury purposes, on the one hand. And on the other hand, [she’s weighing] the real strong probability that the only way she can get a pardon is by giving testimony—true, false, or indifferent—that exonerates Donald Trump. And I think that if she gives that testimony, it doesn’t matter what the Democrats ask her; she’s not running any risk.
Sargent: Yeah. Unfortunately, that seems like it may prove right. This is where the whole thing breaks down for me. It seems like at some point, no matter what, we are eventually going to learn whatever there is to learn about Epstein’s associates—Trump included or not. There’s reporting suggesting that Epstein’s fiftieth birthday album, which Trump reportedly contributed to, is in the possession of Epstein’s estate. If Democrats take back the house next year, they can just call up Epstein’s estate and say, Hey, send over the birthday album, will you? or they can subpoena it. There are also huge amounts of financial transactions involving Epstein on file with the Treasury Department right now in the form of suspicious activity reports from big banks. Democratic House can seek those. Won’t we sooner or later know more or less on both those fronts what there is to know and a lot more and beyond that?
Rotner: More or less, but I’m betting on less. We’re going to know something. The birthday book is going to come out. The Wall Street Journal, I think, is too smart and too careful to publish that story if they didn’t have eyes on that book and on that letter in that book. I just can’t believe that they would’ve published that story because somebody told them that there was such a book. So I wonder what the Journal has. They may not have the book—I’m sure they probably don’t have the book—but they may have photographs of the book. And I’m pretty sure they know where the book is. I just can’t believe that they would’ve published that without having seen it.
So I think that’s going to come out. And I don’t know how it’s going to come out. It could be subpoenaed from Epstein’s estate; [it] could be leaked by somebody; there could be more than one copy. There’s likely more than one copy of the letter, the insert that’s at issue here. I’m sure that the only place that that document exists is not inside the hard copy of that book. So I think that that’s going to come out. Whether the whole story comes out ever, and by ever I mean at a time when it’s still of some public interest.… Sure, some 50 years from now it’s all going to be out there, one supposes. But whether it ever comes out in time to correspond with public interest and more importantly—perhaps—with elections, I think, is really in question. I’m not sure that that’s going to happen.
Sargent: Is there an endgame where Donald Trump pardons Maxwell and makes some ridiculous excuse to MAGA? By the way, I can’t even see how MAGA, if they were being even remotely consistent, which of course they aren’t, would accept Trump pardoning Epstein’s partner—but of course they will. So is there a scenario where that does happen: Trump pardons Maxwell; Maxwell exonerates Trump; the “Justice Department” closes everything down and they just hunker down and ride it out; we just don’t know anything until maybe a Democratic presidential administration takes over, and then even then it becomes tricky? It seems like there’s a very grim endgame possibility here.
Rotner: Yeah. I do think that there’s that scenario. That’s a possibility. Because remember, Trump has got to make a decision too. Trump has got to decide whether the downside of giving a pardon outweighs the downside of not giving a pardon. And if the downside of not giving a pardon is that Ghislaine Maxwell unloads on him, then he’s going to decide that while it might cause some damage, the pardon route is the better one for him.
Sargent: Yeah. It certainly seems like this is not trending in a great direction—but I still on some level think eventually we learn more than we are expecting right now. Philip Rotner, really good to talk to you. Thanks for explaining all that, man. It’s a real shit show, isn’t it?
Rotner: It really is. Thanks for having me, Greg, and keep up the good work. We need to keep shining light on all of this stuff.