MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell has suggested that Donald Trump may have decided he will pardon Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, but will wait until his final day in office to announce it.
“There will be a flood of pardons issued on Donald Trump’s last day in office, that’s for sure,” O’Donnell said during his Last Word monologue on Monday.
“Most of them will be undeserving. Many of them will be flagrantly scandalous, and some of the most outrageous pardons on that day may be chosen just to take some of the outrage away from a pardon of Ghislaine Maxwell, the pardon she may have earned already in her conversation with Donald Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer, Todd Blanche.”
Maxwell, who is serving 20 years in prison for conspiring with Epstein to traffic and sexually abuse children, met with Deputy Attorney General Blanche last month as the Trump administration desperately tried to control the fallout over the backpedaling of its promise to release all files related to Epstein.
Trump, who was friends with Epstein and Maxwell for years, has fueled speculation that he is preparing to pardon the British socialite in exchange for her testimony that could appease the president’s MAGA base.
Trump has not confirmed he is looking at pardoning Maxwell over her federal child sex crimes, but the president, whose name is reported to have appeared multiple times in the Epstein files, has been keen to remind everyone that he is “allowed” to do so.
During her interview with Blanche, which stretched over two days, Maxwell said that she had no information that would be incriminating for Trump, and that the president never did anything in her presence that would cause her concern, sources told ABC News.
Maxwell was also moved from a federal prison in Florida to a more relaxed federal prison camp in Texas.
O’Donnell has now questioned exactly what was promised to Maxwell in exchange for her speaking to Blanche, seeing as she never even testified in her defense during her 2021 sex trafficking trial.
“Maxwell never felt safe talking to a federal prosecutor before or a federal agent of any kind, which is why she’s never done it before. There’s only one federal official in history who Ghislaine Maxwell was willing to talk to, and that’s Donald Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer, who is a friend of Ghislaine Maxwell’s current criminal defense lawyer,” O’Donnell said.
“Did Ghislaine Maxwell promise Todd Blanche that she would never say an incriminating word about Donald Trump? Did Ghislaine Maxwell make that promise with the hope or understanding that she would be getting out of prison by the last day of the Trump presidency, less than three and a half years from now?” he added.
The White House, DOJ, and Maxwell’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
