Trump Claims DOJ Didn’t Tell Him Ghislaine Maxwell Was Moved to New Prison: ‘I Didn’t Know About It’
President Donald Trump claimed that the Department of Justice kept him in the dark when it transferred convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell to a minimum security prison last week.
A former friend of Jeffrey Epstein’s, Maxwell was found guilty in 2021 and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Last month, in a highly unusual move, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who is Trump’s former criminal attorney, interviewed Maxwell over two days. Blanche did not work on the case against Maxwell and was not even at the DOJ when it was prosecuted.
The interview came as Trump faced questions about his friendship with Epstein and his administration’s decision not to release government files about the dead sex trafficker. Just days after Blanche met with Maxwell, the DOJ transferred her from a federal prison in Florida to a lower security camp in Texas.
During a press conference at the White House on Tuesday, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked Trump what, if anything, he knew about the transfer. The president claimed he knew nothing about it:
COLLINS: Were you aware of, and did you personally approve the prison transfer for Ghislaine Maxwell that your Justice Department–
TRUMP: I didn’t know about it at all, no. I read about it just like you did.
COLLINS: And do you believe that she’s a credible voice?
TRUMP: It’s not an uncommon thing.
COLLINS: Do you believe that she’s credible to be listening to? Your deputy attorney general sat down with her recently.
TRUMP: Well, he’s, let me tell you. He’s a very talented man. His name is Todd Blanche. He’s a very legitimate person, very high. I just said very highly thought of person, respected by everybody. And I didn’t talk to him about it. But I will tell you that whatever he asked would be totally appropriate. And it’s not an uncommon thing to do that. And I think he probably wants to make sure that, you know, people that should not be involved or aren’t involved are not hurt by something that would be very, very unfortunate, very unfair to a lot of people. But I will say this, Todd Blanche is one of the most highly respected people you’ll ever meet. So I know this. I didn’t discuss it with him. But anything he talked about with her, or the fact that he did that, not unusual number one. And most importantly is something that would be totally aboveboard.
Despite Trump’s claim that such a prison transfer is “not an uncommon thing,” CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Elie Honig called the move “so unusual” because he believes that Maxwell is not a credible witness.
Watch above via NewsNation.
