Trump’s MAGA allies zero in on Ghislaine Maxwell as Epstein furor persists

As President Donald Trump has struggled to contain the stubborn fallout of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, several of his staunchest supporters and conservative media allies think they have finally found the key to exposing a secret cabal of rich and powerful pedophiles.

Some of MAGA’s most prominent voices say without evidence that Ghislaine Maxwell, who was sentenced to 20 years for sex trafficking girls for Epstein, has inside knowledge that would help law enforcement bring untold elites to justice.

“She is the Rosetta stone. She knows everything,” former Epstein and Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz said on Fox News this week. “She arranged every single trip, and if she was just given … immunity, she could be compelled to testify.”

The intensifying focus on the former girlfriend and accomplice of the now-deceased Epstein, a convicted sex offender and disgraced financier, represents the latest turn in a winding case that has long engaged conspiracy theorists and right-wing pundits. Maxwell, they say, can unmask powerful elites — many of them Democrats — who they believe the government has protected from prosecution.

Trump was once a friend of Maxwell and Epstein, and has also amplified conspiracy theories about the case. Now he finds himself under constant pressure to reveal more, even as the continued interest threatens him politically, with the world waiting to discover what else there is to know about his relationship to Epstein and whether it implicates the sitting president. Many MAGA luminaries who say Maxwell is vital to cracking the case would consider leniency, so long as she identifies the child rapists they say have gone unpunished and arms authorities with the evidence needed to convict them.

She spent hours this week in interviews with the Justice Department, marking the Trump administration’s latest effort to show the president’s base that he is doing something — anything — to release information about the Epstein case in response to political furor. Officials set off a firestorm nearly three weeks ago by announcing that they were closing the case without further arrests or sharing any of the “truckload of evidence” that Attorney General Pam Bondi said the FBI had received just months before.

Those interested in Epstein have long wondered what Maxwell might know, but fresh controversy over the case has elicited renewed urgency as additional accounts surface that illuminate the contours of Trump’s relationship with Epstein.

Johnson then rattled off a string of conspiracy theories unsupported by facts, saying that Maxwell knows about whether Epstein was an intelligence asset, which agency he was working for and who protected his powerful clients once Epstein was exposed. Johnson praised the Trump administration for going to her to get answers.

“This is what we’ve been calling for,” Johnson said, adding, “This is what transparency looks like.”

Charlie Kirk, founder of the influential right-wing nonprofit Turning Point USA, also applauded the Trump administration this week for “going straight to the source” by interviewing Maxwell, which he said was evidence that officials were listening to “the voices of the base.”

Kirk on his show floated the idea of federal officials striking a deal with Maxwell for information.

“This is so powerful. If anybody actually has the information of what has happened around Jeffrey Epstein, it’s not going to be some James Comey-created file. It is going to be Ghislaine Maxwell,” he said.

As Trump returned to the White House, he and his top Justice Department appointees appeared to agree that the incoming administration should release more evidence. But the promised records never materialized, and the Justice Department and FBI on July 6 said in a memo that they would not release more information tied to the case, stating that a “systematic review” failed to find evidence that would justify criminally investigating anyone else. Criminal investigative files typically are shielded from public view.

Trump’s MAGA base responded with fury. Democrats in Congress questioned whether the Trump administration has not released more of the Epstein files because they could implicate Trump — which the administration has vehemently denied. The White House and Justice Department’s quest to contain the conflict led Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to meet Maxwell this week.

Maxwell’s 20-year sentence on a sex-trafficking conviction punctuated the stunning fall of a former socialite who, as the daughter of a British billionaire and former member of parliament, grew up in luxury, among power brokers. Her lawyers said she met Epstein in the 1990s after the death of her father, who was posthumously accused of embezzling large sums from his companies. Maxwell dated Epstein, a financier, and later worked as his employee, a role prosecutors said she used to traffic young sexual abuse victims to Epstein. Maxwell denied the allegations and pleaded not guilty, but in 2021, a jury convicted her of sex trafficking a minor and related crimes.

Epstein was found dead in his jail cell while awaiting trial in 2019. His death was ruled a suicide.

Maxwell and Epstein became friends with Trump as they overlapped in South Florida social circles. He was quoted in 2002 calling Epstein a “terrific guy” whom he had known for 15 years. But the two had a falling out in 2004 that appeared to be over an oceanfront property being sold at auction that both men wanted.

Greg Kelly, a pundit on Newsmax, implied during his Wednesday show that she was a victim, saying there was a rush to demonize her even though she “hung out with Jeffrey Epstein, and I know that’s apparently not good.” He described finding out what she knows as “great.” Newsmax in June named to its board Alexander Acosta, a former labor secretary under Trump who was faulted by the Justice Department’s internal disciplinary arm for exhibiting “poor judgment,” but not “professional misconduct,” in approving a generous deal for Epstein while working as a U.S. attorney.

Far-right activist Jack Posobiec was more skeptical about the prospect of striking a bargain with Maxwell. During his Tuesday show, he praised Blanche and other Justice Department officials for following the evidence. However, he warned that Maxwell’s motives were probably not rooted in helping prosecutors discover the truth or achieve justice, but rather in self-interest in the form of a sentence reduction or presidential pardon.

Unlike other conservative pundits who depicted Maxwell as a victim, Posobiec said she “absolutely deserves … to be behind bars.” A deal might be appropriate, he added, if she provides prosecutors “everything.”

“When I say everything, I mean, who did what, where did it happen, and you also have to provide information that is able to back up the credibility of the accusation,” he said.

No deal had been reached by Friday afternoon after two days of interviews between Maxwell and Blanche, said her lawyer, David Markus. Maxwell answered all questions “truthfully, honestly and to the best of her ability,” he said. After the first day, Blanche issued a statement saying that the Justice Department would release “additional information about what we learned at the appropriate time.”