Ghislaine Maxwell to testify before Congress in Epstein probe
Ghislaine Maxwell, the jailed partner of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, has agreed to testify under oath before a congressional committee investigating the federal government’s handling of the Epstein cases.
James Comer, chairman of the committee overseeing the investigation, said Maxwell will speak to the committee virtually on Feb. 9.
Maxwell’s legal team has previously said she would refuse to answer questions under her constitutional right to remain silent unless she was granted legal immunity.
Previewing the deposition, Comer said “his lawyers say he’s going to enter a Fifth plea,” citing the U.S. Fifth Amendment right to refuse to talk to authorities.
The announcement by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee comes as the Trump administration continues to face harsh scrutiny for its handling of the Epstein case.
Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for recruiting and selling young girls for Epstein’s sexual exploitation.
In July, the committee refused to offer Maxwell legal immunity in exchange for her testimony.
In August, the committee issued legal subpoenas to Maxwell, demanding that she produce evidence under oath.
Maxwell’s legal team said it was a “non-starter” to ask her to testify both from jail and without any legal immunity.
Lawyers said he “cannot risk further criminal exposure in a politically charged environment without formal immunity” because speaking from prison “creates real security risks and undermines the integrity of the process.”
House lawmakers cannot force Maxwell to waive her Fifth Amendment protections.
On Tuesday, Maxwell’s legal team said in a letter to the committee that she would continue to refuse to testify.
“To put it bluntly, moving forward under these circumstances would serve no purpose other than pure political theater and a complete waste of taxpayers’ money,” the lawyers wrote. he wrote. “The committee will arrive at no statements, no answers and no new facts.”
Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021, appealed her conviction in the Supreme Court last October, but the high court refused to hear the former British socialite’s appeal.
Unless he can convince a federal judge in New York to vacate or commute his sentence, a presidential pardon will be his only way out of prison early. The White House denied that Trump was considering granting him a pardon, but Trump said he had not ruled it out.
Separately, the Justice Department faced a deadline of December 19 last year to release all remaining Epstein files in its possession. So far, only some of this has been made public.
The department has faced criticism from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle over the number of redactions to files the law allows only to protect the identities of victims and active criminal investigations.
Meanwhile, a House committee is meeting to discuss former President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary Clinton’s refusal to appear before the panel to answer questions about the investigation into Epstein.
The committee said it was considering filing defamation charges against two people.
