MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell Scorches Trump DOJ Lawyers For Laughing Along With Ghislaine Maxwell In Blistering Commentary

MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell torched a team of lawyers from President Donald Trump’s Justice Department for laughing along with Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell during two days of interviews.

It has barely been two weeks since the Department of Justice released the transcripts and audio from the controversial interview between Ghislaine Maxwell and a team led by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. Maxwell was transferred to a minimum security prison after those interviews.

On Tuesday night’s edition of MSNBC’s The Last Word, O’Donnell opened the show with a blistering commentary on those interviews, singling out the laughter that wasn’t noted in the transcripts and, in his view, underreported:

O’DONNELL: The worst thing about it is the laughter. That’s the part that the news reports haven’t told you about. There was a lot of laughter. They all laughed.

And no one laughed more than Ghislaine Maxwell. In nine hours of what turned out to be casual conversation spread over a Thursday and a Friday in Florida, the single sickest reaction you could have in that discussion of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex crimes was laughter. And they all did it. Ghislaine Maxwell laughed the most, joined by her three criminal defense lawyers. And their laughter was joined by the four people from the Trump Justice Department sitting in that room with a convicted sex trafficker, an indicted perjurer, and they laughed the day away with her two days in a row. But that’s not in the transcript released by the Trump Justice Department on a Friday afternoon because it is not a real transcript of what actually happened in that room.

No court reporter, no stenographer was allowed in that room. And so, this transcript that we have, it’s not real. On page 215 of this first day’s transcript, a woman who is being called the official transcriptionist says in writing that she was, quote, provided audio recording media. And so, this is not a transcript of everything that was said in that room. This is a transcript only of what was recorded in that room and the recording was given to someone to type it up.

So, we have no idea what was said in that room before an FBI agent pressed record. And we have no idea what was said in that room after an FBI agent pressed stop. But thanks to the recording that we do have, we can hear the laughter.

Most court reporters will note laughter when it occurs in a court transcript or a deposition transcript, but the laughter is not included in the transcript that was released. And news organizations trying to quickly report to you the news that’s in that transcript do not have the time to listen to the audio recording.

That’s nine hours.

They can speedread the transcript much faster, and they can search for key words in the transcript and deliver to you what they think is the news contained in that transcript as fast as they can. But there’s a price to that speed, because you don’t — you don’t find out about the laughter. The most perverse thing that you could possibly have done in that room was to fill that room with laughter which Ghislaine Maxwell did repeatedly.

Ghislaine Maxwell and Donald Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer who appeared to be acting as Donald Trump’s criminal defense lawyer in that room laughing about her memories and failure of memories about her decades of time spent with Jeffrey Epstein in which she described herself and her criminal co-conspirator Jeffrey Epstein as friends with benefits.

She was friends with a lot of other people besides Jeffrey Epstein, according to her. And Donald Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer, Todd Blanche, now the deputy attorney general of the United States of America, desperately wanted to get as many of those names in the transcript as possible so that the name Donald Trump could be swimming in a sea of other well-known names, including as many Kennedys as possible.

Senator Ted Kennedy, who never met Jeffrey Epstein and died in 2009, was brought into the discussion by Todd Blanche, as was John F. Kennedy, Jr., who died in 1999 and never met Jeffrey Epstein. But Todd Blanche managed to drag John F. Kennedy, Jr. into this discussion, which was not an interview. It was not a deposition. It was just what it sounds like when you listen to it. A pleasant discussion among friends. That’s what it sounds like. Todd Blanche is friends with Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal defense lawyer. It was a very friendly chat.

Todd Blanche reached out to help Maxwell in every way he possibly could in his very friendly conversation with her. He helped finish her answers when he could, leaving Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal defense lawyer. No need to ever lean in to be protective of his client in any way when the questioning got too tough because it never came close to being challenging in any way for Ghislaine Maxwell.

Maxwell’s criminal defense lawyer, David Markus, was so relaxed with his personal friend, Todd Blanche, doing the questioning that when Ghislaine Maxwell mentioned an investment she claimed she made in Microsoft, her criminal defense lawyer thought, that’s the perfect time for him to throw in a joke, which was quote, “don’t charge her with insider trading.” And that got a big laugh in the room because that’s the kind of room it was. It was a joke.

Legally, the whole thing was a joke from start to finish. And legally, it was a travesty from start to finish. Ghislaine Maxwell laughed easily and confidently when she spoke with awe about meeting John F. Kennedy, Jr., and her awe was based entirely on how handsome he was and how much she put it to Todd Blanche, she, quote, fancied JFK, Jr.

That was one of the many completely useless and inane and time-wasting and disgraceful digressions in that friendly discussion that lasted nine hours and had less than one hour of relevant discussion to the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Ghislaine Maxwell now says they’re all lying. She received no challenge at all from Donald Trump’s criminal defense lawyer. Now, the deputy attorney general, when she said that, Ghislaine Maxwell said that every victim who testified in her criminal trial where she was convicted was lying and committing perjury. And Todd Blanche said at the end of a day of such lies by Ghislaine Maxwell, everything was great today.

Quote, everything was great today. I think that we — it was very helpful and I appreciate you trying to be as complete as you can.

I appreciate you trying to be as complete as you can? Complete? Why didn’t he say honest? Why didn’t he say truthful?

Because even Todd Blanche knew he couldn’t possibly get away with the suggestion that what Ghislaine Maxwell was saying was honest. And you couldn’t possibly even claim that it was complete, but complete was a safer word for him to use.

Watch above via MSNBC’s The Last Word.