MAGA Inches Closer to a Ghislaine Maxwell Alliance
Is perpetrating heinous crimes against children too big a hurdle for a political alliance of convenience? Maybe not.
DONALD TRUMP’S JEFFREY EPSTEIN DISASTER has now been dragged into its third week, with the Wall Street Journal’s report Wednesday confirming that Trump’s own name is in the Epstein files and that he knew it back in May.
And making the scandal worse for him is that there are few ways out that don’t involve just turning over the files.
But Trump’s media allies are now warming up to an alternative idea, one that was previously unthinkable: allying themselves with Epstein associate and convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.
Soliciting information from Maxwell seems to be the next play the White House is making. On Tuesday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced he would meet with Maxwell, while the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee plans to depose her in prison. The tactic certainly mirrors prior attempts by the administration to placate the base by dangling out the prospect for future Epstein scandal revelations. Just days ago, the president said he wanted “pertinent” grand jury testimony released, though a federal judge ended up blocking that request.
The issue, of course, is that Maxwell, who is facing a twenty-year prison sentence, will presumably want something in return for whatever goods she gives up. And that makes any effort to use her as a heat valve to alleviate MAGA fury a bit tricky.
Marcy Wheeler at Empty Wheel laid out the kind of cooperation agreement or other deal the Trump administration could eventually pursue with Maxwell—mainly that the Justice Department could offer her a cooperation agreement that would see Maxwell reveal certain Epstein associates in exchange for a lighter sentence.
The Trump DOJ presumably would not sign off on any agreement if Maxwell were to implicate the president himself. But if she were to leave Trump out of her revelations, it would be seen as a laughably transparent effort to get leniency from the feds. Even Trump’s base would have trouble buying it. Which may explain why right-wing media figures are starting to prepare their fans for the possibility that Trump—the guy they expected to arrest the pedophiles—could soon strike a deal with one of them.
“Maybe she wants immunity, maybe she wants some sort of protection, I don’t know,” pro-Trump Wunderkind Charlie Kirk said on his show Tuesday. “But it definitely is something that is worthy of praise, and worthy of our encouragement.”
The files themselves, of course, would likely reveal much more about Epstein than Maxwell would. But Kirk argued that Trump’s claim that the files were somehow seeded by Deep State malefactors against him proves the entire case file is untrustworthy. Maxwell was the last option, Kirk said, rather than relying on “some potential mine that James Comey left to hurt Donald Trump.”
Over on Newsmax on Monday, host Greg Kelly implied that Maxwell may have been unjustly prosecuted. In comments first noted by Media Matters, Kelly suggested Maxwell didn’t deserve her double-digit prison sentence.
“And then he’s got that girlfriend, Ghislaine—Ghislaine Maxwell,” Kelly said. “Right? She’s in jail right now for, like, forty years or something crazy. And maybe she deserves it. Maybe she doesn’t. Again, not a very popular thing, but we’ll take a look.”
Kelly grudgingly conceded that Maxwell’s alleged crimes were bad—“Yikes. Minors,” as he put it—but added that Maxwell might not have received a fair chance to defend herself.
“How do you defend yourself?” Kelly asked. “This is in the height of MeToo. Does that sound right? Does that sound—maybe it’s legal.”
(Alex Acosta, the former federal prosecutor and Trump first-term labor secretary who gave Epstein his original sweetheart plea deal, is on Newsmax’s board.)
NOT EVEN A MONTH AGO, the idea of Trump supporters openly embracing a convicted child sex trafficker would have been unimaginable. Yet the idea that Maxwell is innocent, or at least was railroaded by the same overzealous prosecutors Trump claims pursued him, is unquestionably starting to circulate in right-wing media. And it’s owed, in part, to Trump’s abrupt pivot into arguing that the entire case is fundamentally flawed.
As calls for the Epstein files to be released have grown, Trump has begun insisting that evidence in the investigation has been irrevocably tainted by assorted villains—from Barack Obama to James Comey. In doing so, he has raised the question of why Maxwell should be in prison at all. It’s a similar pattern to what happened around the January 6th rioters. Having spent years insisting that the 2020 election was stolen, Trump had laid the predicate to ultimately pardon them.
Not everyone on the right is warming up to the Maxwell rehabilitation. Last week, far-right activist and Trump adviser Laura Loomer warned that lobbyists would attempt to gin up a Maxwell pardon campaign. Prominent conspiracy theorist Whitney Webb, who has investigated Epstein’s connections, posted on X on Tuesday that the administration’s focus on Maxwell was untrustworthy. Webb warned that a pardon could be forthcoming.
“If they have Ghislaine testify and say what she’s told, they can reward her with a pardon or reduce her sentence,” Webb wrote.
Still, the idea of making a deal with Maxwell is winning support in key corners. Jack Posobiec on Tuesday called Blanche’s outreach to her “the plot twist of all plot twists.” He then laid out the specific circumstances in which a Maxwell deal would be justified.
“If Ghislaine Maxwell wants anything from the Department of Justice,” Posobiec said, “there needs to be names and there needs to be receipts.”
Was Posobiec worried that Maxwell might implicate the president he so loves? Not really. He made clear that among the “names” Maxwell could provide, Trump’s was not one he wanted.
“He’s been falsely accused of illicit behavior with Epstein time and time again,” Posobiec said. “That’s already been litigated. Who else is out there, Ghislaine?”
We are an unserious people at a serious time.
Hmm, what could be inappropriate here? How about the fact that Trump is trying to turn a convicted sexual predator into a pro-Trump character witness in the court of public opinion? How about the fact that Maxwell would likely say what Trump wants to hear only if there's something in it for her, like a presidential pardon or a commutation of her sentence?
Blanche announced that, “If Ghislane Maxwell has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the DOJ will hear what she has to say.” Never mind that Maxwell told the judge during her trial that she had no other information to add. Trump wants his people to get to Maxwell first, to shape and tease out any additional “information” with implied incentives.
Maxwell’s obvious incentive to tell Trump what he wants to hear already makes her credibility suspect. Equally important, the DOJ previously named Maxwell a ‘pervasive liar.’ In 2021, prosecutors told the judge overseeing her trial that Maxwell was willing to “brazenly lie under oath about her conduct.” They noted two prior perjury counts that showed “her willingness to flout the law in order to protect herself.”
Up next: Trump golfs naked, then eats a live snake on Fox
https://sabrinahaake.substack.com/p/arresting-obama-wont-make-epstein