Lordy, there are tapes.
In the latest turn of the immortal scandal over Jeffrey Epstein, CNN first reported Tuesday that Donald Trump’s administration has recorded conversations with Epstein’s convicted sex trafficker accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell and is working on a transcript, which it may even release.
The revelation about Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s conversations with Maxwell last month is certain to renew demands for transparency from sectors of the president’s base that first whipped the Epstein storm into overdrive.
And it comes as senior administration officials plan to meet at Vice President JD Vance’s residence for dinner Wednesday to discuss how to better handle the Epstein case, CNN’s team reported.
Taking a step back, it’s an extraordinary use of an administration’s power for a top Justice Department official to spend two days talking to someone convicted of grooming, abusing and trafficking young girls for a figure as reviled as Epstein. The idea that officials would then consider releasing an account of the meeting to brazenly help a president escape a political scandal raises ethical, legal and political questions that reflect the unfathomable times in Trump’s second term.
But it’s hard to see how releasing a transcript of the interview with Maxwell could end up making people less interested in the intrigue — which would be the ostensible purpose of the exercise.
More likely, such a move would risk repeating the damaging cycle that has plunged the White House ever deeper into a political morass.
Every time the administration takes a step designed to quell the scandal, all it succeeds in doing is raising expectations and brewing new conspiracy theories among MAGA activists obsessed with the case while widening public exposure to an episode that has blotted out the president’s summer winning streak.
Three senior administration officials told CNN that discussions are taking place about releasing the transcript of Maxwell’s interviews with Blanche in Florida two weeks ago. That was before she was moved, without explanation, to a less draconian prison in Texas — a step that itself launched new speculation and suggestions that Trump was misusing presidential power to advance his personal interests. A final decision on next steps on a transcript has not been made, one of the officials said.
But this news came on a day when the Epstein question broke the surface in Washington again — just when the White House hoped it was fading.
News came Tuesday that the House Oversight Committee had issued a dozen subpoenas to the Justice Department and high-profile Democratic and Republican figures for files and information related to Epstein.
And in the latest step of a complex dance with the administration, Maxwell’s lawyers warned against the release of sealed grand jury transcripts about the Epstein case. They said the move — one way the DOJ is seeking to appease demands for transparency from the Trump base — would prejudice her due process interests as she petitions the Supreme Court to take up her appeal.
“Jeffrey Epstein is dead. Ghislaine Maxwell is not,” Maxwell’s attorney, David Oscar Markus, wrote to the judge in a filing.
The aphorism is factual. But Epstein’s poisoned influence on politics has never been so alive, six years after he was found dead by suicide in his cell while awaiting trial on a catalogue of horrific charges of abusing young women and girls.
Many of those victims on Tuesday questioned the motives of the Trump administration in its dealings with Maxwell and said that indications that she was being “legitimized” had traumatized them all over again. They told the judge in the grand jury documents case that survivors supported transparency but said the “safety, privacy and dignity” of victims must be protected.
Why a Maxwell transcript might make the scandal even worse
There’s been intense speculation about the past friendship between Epstein and Trump, both New York and Florida celebrities, in the 1990s and the early 2000s, before the future president threw the disgraced financier out of his Mar-a-Lago club. Epstein “stole” his employees, Trump told reporters last week.
There’s no evidence that Trump did anything legally wrong during his friendship with Epstein, and he has never been charged with any crimes related to their connection.
The president, however, keeps refocusing attention on Epstein’s case by refusing to rule out a pardon or commutation for Maxwell. Trump instead keeps noting that he has the power to ease the plight of someone who has a huge incentive to help him.
“I’m allowed to do it, but nobody’s asked me to do it. I know nothing about it. I don’t know anything about the case, but I know I have the right to do it,” Trump said in an interview with Newsmax, a conservative outlet, last week.
It is unclear what Blanche and Maxwell spoke about. But the point of releasing a transcript might be to show Epstein knew multiple famous people and not just Trump. This might defuse concerns about the president’s past relationship with him.
But such a release might also be unfair to people who came across Epstein but who committed no crimes.
There would be issues with Maxwell’s credibility as a witness, given the nature of the conviction for which she is serving a 20-year prison sentence. People would ask what she got in return for her cooperation. Already, survivors of Epstein’s abuse and the family of Virginia Giuffre, one of his most well-know victims, who took her life this year, have warned there should be no leniency.
Trump insisted, as he answered a question from CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Tuesday, that he knew nothing about the contents of Blanche’s talks with Maxwell.
“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 above board,” the president said.
But it is highly unusual for a deputy attorney general to meet with an imprisoned inmate convicted of child sex trafficking as a related scandal swirls around the president who appointed him. And Blanche is Trump’s former personal lawyer.
And in any case, any notion that a transcript would end the Epstein drama feels far-fetched. The document would need to be heavily redacted to avoid revealing sensitive details like the names of victims. But this would surely fuel fringe intriguers who argue that the government is involved in a massive cover-up. It’s the nature of conspiracy theories that efforts to squelch them only spark new tributaries of unhinged speculation. This has already happened. Previous disclosures by Attorney General Pam Bondi of documents and details in the case only conjured claims of a deep state plot to hide the truth when the release fell far short of her promises to MAGA activists.
House Oversight ensures this drama will run and run
The House Oversight Committee’s subpoena to the Justice Department calls for the provision to Congress of any Epstein files in its possession, with victims’ names redacted. The GOP-led panel also wants communications between former Biden administration officials and the Justice Department related to the case.
Departments of Justice often resist releasing sensitive documents to Congress: They often leak. But Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, who serves on the House Oversight Committee, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday the House would reinforce the demand for action in September, when Khanna is hoping for a vote on his bipartisan bill demanding the full release of information. “I think soon you are going to see many victims speaking out themselves about how this is important for them, in terms of disclosure in terms of transparency,” Khanna said.
The Republican-led panel additionally subpoenaed 10 individuals for closed-door depositions between August and mid-October. Those are: former Attorneys General Merrick Garland, William Barr, Jeff Sessions, Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder and Alberto Gonzales; former FBI Director James Comey; former special counsel and FBI Director Robert Mueller III; former Secretary of State and first lady Hillary Clinton; and former President Bill Clinton.
But there are huge omissions on the list of subpoenas that raise doubts about whether it’s really seeking full transparency. Like Trump, who was mentioned multiple times in the Epstein files, and his first-term Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, who handed Epstein a sweetheart plea deal in 2008. There are also no victims — people who have often been ignored in the current political uproar — on the subpoena list.
Ryan Goodman, a New York University law professor, said the omission of Trump from the subpoenas was “very glaring,” since a subpoena sent to former President Bill Clinton said Clinton could have information regarding Epstein that may be relevant to the investigation. The same is true of Trump. “It only stands to reason that if you are looking around for the people that would provide information for the investigation, he (Trump) would be pretty close to the top of that list,” Goodman told CNN’s Erin Burnett.
The subpoenas likely mean months of negotiations and legal battles about the timing and scope of testimony. So the Epstein saga is here to stay.
The inclusion of the names of high-profile Democrats and past Republican officials may be an attempt to spare Trump from being the only person tainted by association with Epstein.
The warning by Maxwell’s lawyers that grand jury testimony should not be released potentially puts their client in opposition to the Justice Department at a time when she has strong incentives to help the administration.
The DOJ went to court to ask for the release of grand jury transcripts about Epstein and Maxwell, hoping to placate the MAGA base. The testimony, however, is thought to be only a fraction of investigative material the DOJ is holding. Some observers question whether officials really want grand jury documents released or whether they petitioned the judge only to create political cover.
CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig explained that Maxwell’s lawyers are protecting her interests in the event that Supreme Court accepts her appeal. Her lawyer would “not want this grand jury material out there for the public,” he told CNN’s Kasie Hunt.
Taken together, Tuesday’s developments mean Epstein drama will go on.
And the history of tapes in American scandals — from Watergate onward — create evocative echoes. Audio and questions about its release, redaction and editing have been inseparable from lore about cover-ups and chicanery in Washington politics. That’s why — amid a previous scandal — Comey replied, when asked whether there were recordings of his conversations with Trump: “Lordy, I hope there are tapes.”
