Epstein's former lawyer: Ghislaine Maxwell should get immunity in exchange for secrets
Jeffrey Epstein's former lawyer has suggested that the sex-trafficking financier's only convicted accomplice should be granted immunity from further prosecution in exchange for coming clean in front of Congress.
Ghislaine Maxwell, 63, is the only associate held criminally or civilly liable in connection with the allegations against Epstein. In 2016, she sat for a deposition in a civil lawsuit, in which she denied recollection of nearly two dozen flights on Epstein's private jet with an underage Virginia Giuffre, who would go on to become the trafficking duo's most outspoken accuser. Epstein's flight logs showed Giuffre and Maxwell on the plane at the same time 23 times before she turned 18, Fox News Digital reported previously.
Giuffre died of suicide earlier this year.
"[Maxwell] knows everything," Alan Dershowitz, a former attorney for Epstein, told Fox News' Shannon Bream on "Fox News Sunday." "She is the Rosetta Stone."
An unidentified friend of Maxwell's said in a recent interview with the Daily Mail that she would be open to testifying before Congress. Maxwell's attorney declined to confirm or deny the reporting.
"If she were just given use immunity, she could be compelled to testify," Dershowitz said. "I'm told that she actually would be willing to testify, and there'd be no reason for her to withhold any information. So I don't see any negative in giving her the kind of use immunity that would compel her to testify. So she ought to be summoned in front of a congressional committee."
The comments come days after federal authorities said they would ask a federal judge to unseal secret grand jury materials in an attempt to shed more light on Epstein's criminal enterprise. Dershowitz, however, warned that most of the material of interest to the public is not in the grand jury materials, but in sealed court documents, some of which he has already seen.
He cautioned, however, that not all the allegations leveled at people in Epstein's orbit would be credible.
"As long as there's nothing redacted about the accuser's lack of credibility, then the public has the right to make its own decision," he said. "Just because somebody's name is mentioned doesn't really mean very much."
Under federal law, use of immunity is a legal protection that prevents a witness' testimony or any evidence drawn from it from being used to prosecute them criminally, so long as they tell the truth.
In 2021, more than two years after Epstein's death in custody while awaiting his own trial, Maxwell was convicted of helping him traffic teen girls. She received a 20-year sentence and has appealed her case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"She arranged every single trip with everybody," Dershowitz said. "She knows everything."
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