Epstein lawyer: Maxwell will try to make a deal with Trump

Telegraph

4 days ago

Ghislaine Maxwell will attempt to make a deal with the Trump administration when government officials visit her in prison, Jeffrey Epstein's former lawyer claimed.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced he would meet the convicted sex offender in the 'coming days' to find out if she has information about anyone who participated in Epstein's sex crimes.
'She's going to make a deal' with the Department of Justice (DoJ), Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor who previously represented Epstein, said.
'That's the way things are done. They make deals with the Mafia, so I'm certain they are going to try to make a deal with her,' he told The New York Post.
President Donald Trump continues to battle the biggest challenge of his presidency, the fallout from his refusal to release all the information the US government has on Epstein.
The political storm is something of a gift to Maxwell's lawyers, who attempted to lean on Mr Trump during a previous conviction appeal, describing the US president as the 'ultimate dealmaker'.
Mr Dershowitz, who previously called Maxwell, 63, the 'Rosetta Stone' of information about Epstein, added: 'She knows everything – not just about the perpetrators but the victims. And she knows about the victims who became perpetrators.'
Maxwell has two potential avenues for having her sentence reduced. The government could file what is called a Rule 35 motion, to request her sentence be reduced by a federal judge based on conduct, including cooperation with the government.
But any request would have to be granted by a federal judge, and Maxwell's case is being overseen by US District Judge Paul Engelmayer, who was appointed by Barack Obama.
The other option would see Mr Trump himself commute Maxwell's sentence, or grant her a pardon, which, as the US president, he has unfettered power to do.
Mr Trump has not been implicated in any allegations of wrongdoing, but his close relationship with Epstein has come back into focus since the DoJ ruled there was no 'client list' of men who participated in Epstein's crimes.
On Tuesday, Mr Trump said he was facing a 'witch hunt' as he faced mounting pressure to order the release of secret Epstein files.
But a former federal prosecutor who flipped Mafia bosses while working for the government – and helped secure their releases as a defence lawyer, said Maxwell's case is not so simple.
'This is a situation where she potentially has information on the very person who holds the key to the jailhouse door for her, that is the president of the United States', Edward A McDonald told The Telegraph.
'It would seem that, unless she exonerates Trump, she is not going to get any quid for her quo, he's not going to pardon her or agree to have the justice department give her a lesser sentence... and of course, if she exonerates Trump, she's also going to have to cooperate in other cases, but no one's going to believe her testimony,' he added.
Mr McDonald, who secured the release of mob boss Joseph Massino in 2013 after he cooperated with federal prosecutors after being handed two life sentences, said Maxwell was 'hardly a credible witness'.
Maxwell was charged with two counts of perjury over alleged lies she told the government during a 2016 civil deposition about Epstein.
He said any prosecutor would need to have a 'tremendous amount of corroboration' for any potential testimony she might give, which if they had would have already been acted upon.
'If she exonerates Trump, no juror is going to believe her, so the value of her cooperation is going to be minimal, and of course, if she includes Trump, if she implicates Trump, she's certainly not going to get pardoned,' he said.
Mr McDonald, who played himself, the US Attorney who flipped mob boss Henry Hill, in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas, said the case is also thorny for Mr Trump, whose supporters will interrogate why he pardoned her if cooperation does not lead to any indictments.
'Even the Trump base is going to say, 'oh, wait a minute, he obviously has exonerated her, because she kept him out of it,'' he said.
In the event the DoJ requests a sentence reduction, the supervising judge has the power and autonomy to reject it.
Mr McDonald noted that when he was a prosecutor in the early 1980s and convicted the inside man who set up the robbery at John F Kennedy airport in 1978, the judge rejected his request for a sentence reduction for the defendant's cooperation because it had not led to any indictments.
'He said it was a dollar short and a day late,' he said.
Former federal prosecutors have said the way this case has been handled is extraordinary and has not followed usual procedures.
Mitchell Epner, a criminal defence lawyer who is a partner at firm Kudman Trachten Aloe Posner, told The Telegraph: 'I have never seen a case where the DOJ has announced ahead of time that it was going to be meeting with a potential cooperator.'
He also said it was 'absolutely extraordinary' that Mr Blanche, the number two in the DoJ, would hold a meeting that is usually carried out by a line prosecutor.
'It definitely seems the impetus here comes from outside the DoJ because this is so foreign to standard operating procedure,' he said.
Mr Blanche was appointed to the plum role at the DoJ after representing Mr Trump during his criminal fraud case in Manhattan.