CNN’s Elie Honig Accuses Trump DOJ of ‘Trying to Appease’ Epstein Critics With Ghislaine Maxwell Interview

CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig argued that the Department of Justice is merely trying to “check a box” and appease critics by interviewing Ghislaine Maxwell, the ex-accomplice of the late sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.

On Thursday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche stated the following on X amid the continued uproar over the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein case:

Today, I met with Ghislaine Maxwell, and I will continue my interview of her tomorrow. The Department of Justice will share additional information about what we learned at the appropriate time.

On Friday, CNN anchor John Berman asked Honig to weigh in on the state of play as Blanche prepares to speak with Maxwell again.

“Okay, what is happening here resembles, superficially, the very ordinary cooperation process that I went through countless times as a prosecutor. You have a criminal defendant, that person is interested in cooperating, you spend days upon days with them, and you download everything they have. It looks like that’s what’s happening here. But let’s be clear, it’s not,” replied Honig. “This is not going to result in Ghislaine Maxwell becoming a full cooperating witness for the United States of America. This is not, realistically, given her credibility problems, given her past, going to result in DOJ in signing her up as a cooperator, giving her a sentencing break, indicting new people based on her, calling her as a witness at trial. And so the question then becomes, and I think these are what Kara’s questions go to, what is the end game? What are they trying to do? It looks to me like they’re trying to check a box, or trying to appease the critics, be able to say, ‘Look, we sat down with her, we got information, we dug in, we tried to find the truth,’ and hopefully that’ll appease people. I don’t know that it’ll work, but I think that’s the endgame.”

Watch above via CNN.

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