Former FBI Chief Points Out ‘Suspicious’ Moment in Maxwell Tapes
Both the sex trafficker and the government “got exactly what they wanted” out of the interview, says Andrew McCabe.
A former FBI official described one “suspicious” element of convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell’s interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche: she mentioned Donald Trump unprompted.
Andrew McCabe, the bureau’s ex-deputy director, told CNN OutFront anchor Erin Burnett Friday night that the whole interview between Maxwell and Blanche, who was previously Trump’s personal attorney, was concerning—in particular, how Maxwell referred to the president.
“[Blanche] didn’t even have to ask about him for her to bring him up,” Burnett observed.
Maxwell first mentioned Trump a few minutes into the July 24 interview when she said she may have met him in 1990 in New York because her father “was friendly with him and liked him very much.”
McCabe then noted how Maxwell repeatedly referred to him as “President Trump” and how, in McCabe’s opinion, she seemed to know exactly what Blanche wanted to hear. She at one point commended Trump’s “extraordinary achievement” in being elected president again, and said he had always been nice to her.
“I just think the entire thing, Erin, is so curious. It’s so suspicious,” McCabe said.
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“When you listen to the tapes, you get the sense that Ghislaine Maxwell went into that room knowing what information she had to deliver to get their attention and to get their approval and to get some sort of benefit that she is pursuing from the administration,” he explained.
Blanche, McCabe added, also had a similar goal, which was “what she was going to say about Donald Trump’s involvement or noninvolvement.”
Maxwell (right, with Epstein) spoke to Blanche, Trump's former personal attorney, during a two-day interview behind bars while serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking.
Davidoff Studios Photography/Getty Images
“And both sides delivered to each other’s satisfaction,” he said.
Maxwell did not implicate Trump in any nefarious activity. After her interview, she was moved to a low-security prison in Texas, which observers have called a step up. She is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking, which is a pardonable offense.
McCabe also commented skeptically on how the interview recording and transcript were released. There were “no line agents or investigators in the room who could serve as witnesses to what transpired in an extraordinarily rare interview between a possible government cooperator and the deputy attorney general,” he noted.
“It’s recorded and then immediately released to the public, which is not something you would ever do with the testimony of somebody who you were considering turning into a cooperator,” McCabe said.
“Nothing about this process was conventional or normal, but it does seem that both the administration and Ghislaine Maxwell got exactly what they wanted from it.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Department of Justice for comment.
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