Mike Johnson says Ghislaine Maxwell coming clean on Epstein case would be ‘a great service to the country'
Johnson appeared Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press, where moderator Kristen Welker asked him point-blank if the convicted sex-trafficker girlfriend of Epstein could be trusted to accurately testify about the crimes she and Epstein committed. Epstein was awaiting prosecution for sex trafficking underage girls after a previous conviction on similar charges when he died in federal custody.
Maxwell has been thrust back into the spotlight as the MAGA base has grown frustrated with President Donald Trump and his administration's shutting down of the so-called Epstein files release. Last week, a top Department of Justice official met with Maxwell about the case.
"Well, I mean, look; it's a good question. I hope so," Johnson told Welker in response. "I hope that she would want to come clean."
"I hope she's telling the truth. She is convicted, she's serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking. Her character is in some question....but if she wants to come clean now, that would be a great service to the country. We want to know every bit of information that she has."
The House Oversight Committee voted this week to issue a subpoena for Maxwell after the Justice Department announced its own plans to speak with her. Agency officials did so for nine hours between Thursday and Friday, after making a statement seeming to confirm that her testimony hadn't been aggressively sought before.
Some have called Maxwell to testify and suggested she should be given a pardon for sharing what she knows about the Epstein case. She was convicted of sexual abuse against minors and sex trafficking for helping Epstein carry out crimes.
Johnson touted the Oversight subpoena favorably Sunday, casting it as evidence that GOP leadership supported efforts aimed at transparency.
The Trump administration turned speculation about Epstein's death and the so-called 'Client List' of his co-conspirators into a raging wildfire in early July. The Justice Department and FBI published a joint memo explaining that future releases from the files would not take place, and that the list of Epstein's accomplices was not found. Epstein was rumored to have cultivated personal relationships with many powerful men and institutions.
Critics of the president have alleged that a cover-up is in the works regarding the Epstein files. Democrats have hammered the president for his reversal, and a pair of scoops from the Wall Street Journal have reported on the president's connections to Epstein, to Trump's fury. The newspaper reported the contents of a message allegedly penned by Trump to Epstein as part of a 50th birthday celebration in 2003, including allusions to a shared 'secret' between them. Trump firmly denied authoring the note, and sued the Journal and its reporters in response.
A second article from the Journal days later reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi informed Trump in May that he was mentioned in the Epstein investigation multiple times, but it was not clear in what context. The White House called that story 'fake' and has repeatedly insinuated that Democrats including Joe Biden tampered with evidence while Trump was out of office.
Being mentioned in the files does not mean wrongdoing, and hundreds of names are reportedly included.
The lead GOP co-sponsor behind a House resolution that would force the Justice Department to release the entirety of its collected evidence related to Epstein said Sunday that his push was to help the convicted pedophile's victims and would only grow stronger in the coming weeks.
Earlier on the same network, Rep. Thomas Massie appeared alongside the resolution's lead Democratic co-sponsor, Rep. Ro Khanna, as the two promoted a resolution that would force Attorney General Pam Bondi to release 'all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials' related to the Epstein and Maxwell investigations.
Massie told Welker that 'the release of the Epstein files is emblematic of what Trump ran for' and explained that the president's MAGA base expected results.
'There seems to be a class of people beyond the law, beyond the judicial system...we all thought that when Trump was elected, he would be the bull in the china shop and break that all up,' said Massie.
Massie went on to say that the Trump administration had lost his trust on the issue after publicly supporting transparency around the investigation, then doing an abrupt about-face. The administration is now calling on its supporters to move on from the issue and focus on hashing out issues with the 2016 'Russiagate' investigation instead of Epstein.
Top administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance, also spent months calling for the very releases the Justice Department says it won't authorize.
'People who were allegedly working on this weren't sincere in their efforts,' Massie said. 'Somebody should ask Speaker Mike Johnson, why did he recess Congress early so that he didn't have to deal with the Epstein issue?'
'Politics is the art of the doable. There's enough public pressure right now that we can get 218 votes and force this to a vote on the floor,' said Massie.
He also firmly rejected a DOJ memo explaining the administration's position against further releases of information from the Epstein files, despite the very public promises of Bondi and others to do the opposite. In the memo, agency officials said that explicit imagery involving children was 'intertwined' throughout the files collected by the Justice Department.
Some have said the files should not be released to protect sex-abuse victims of both Maxwell and Epstein.
'That's a straw man [argument],' Massie responded on Sunday, after Welker read part of the memo. 'Ro [Khanna] and I carefully crafted this legislation so that the victims' names would be redacted, and that no child pornography will be released.'
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