Tonight in Your Rights: Maxwell clamors for clemency
Once chatty with Todd Blanche, Ghislaine Maxwell suddenly clammed up before Congress — and went to Trump hat in hand.
“Tonight in Your Rights” is a legal roundup for particularly active days in U.S. courts.
No longer scheduled for a friendly conversation with Donald Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche, convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination on Monday at her scheduled deposition before the House Oversight Committee.
Maxwell’s attorney David Oscar Markus then offered to exonerate Trump in exchange for a pardon or commutation.
“If this Committee and the American public truly want to hear the unfiltered truth about what happened, there is a straightforward path. Ms. Maxwell is prepared to speak fully and honestly if granted clemency by President Trump.”
“Only she can provide the complete account. Some may not like what they hear, but the truth matters. For example, both President Trump and President Clinton are innocent of any wrongdoing. Ms. Maxwell alone can explain why, and the public is entitled to that explanation.”
In August, Maxwell purported to have cleared both U.S. presidents of wrongdoing already during a breezy two-day conversation with Deputy Attorney General Blanche. Trump’s Justice Department granted Maxwell a proffer agreement that partially immunized her if she spoke truthfully. Maxwell denied the crimes of her conviction, protected her associates, and attacked the survivors.
Sky Roberts, the brother of the late victim Virginia Giuffre, noted in a statement that evidence released in the Department of Justice’s Epstein Library already undermines Maxwell’s sworn statements.
Addressed directly to Maxwell, the statement reads:
“Moreover, in light of the recent release of files, significant inconsistencies have emerged between the record and your prior sworn testimony. Should it be determined that you knowingly provided false statements under oath, we call upon this Committee and Congress to act decisively and pursue any and all additional charges warranted by the evidence.”
During her conversation with Blanche, Maxwell claimed that the infamous photograph of Giuffre standing with her and then-Prince Andrew was “fake,” but Maxwell admitted its authenticity in one of the released emails. Maxwell denied that Trump and Epstein were close, even though the pair’s decades-long friendship was well-documented.
Maxwell said she couldn’t recall ever seeing Trump in Epstein’s house, but emails showed her commenting on such a meeting in 2011.
In the wake of the interview, the Justice Department moved Maxwell to a minimum security prison in Texas, even though her sex offender status would typically have disqualified that transfer.
Sky Roberts and his wife Amanda called upon Congress to push for the Justice Department to reverse that decision.
“Finally, we ask Congress to support our continued efforts to ensure that Ghislaine Maxwell is held fully accountable for her actions and placed exactly where she belongs: in a maximum-security prison. We ask you to continue this fight with us and every survivor, to continue this pursuit of justice with the tenacity and strength of Virginia. Not out of vengeance, but out of justice. Out of recognition of the gravity and scale of the harm. And out of the simple, necessary message that recruiting and facilitating the sexual abuse of children is a life-destroying crime, and it should be treated that way.
Ghislaine Maxwell, we will not let what you did be minimized, softened, or rewritten.
We’ll end this letter with Virginia’s last wishes for you: ‘Ghislaine, you deserve to spend the rest of your life in a jail cell. Trapped in a cage forever just like you trapped your victims.’” (emphasis in original)
Markus attributed his client’s sudden silence to her recently filed habeas corpus petition. He openly called for Trump to reduce or eliminate her sentence or conviction in a social media post.
“On my advice, Ghislaine Maxwell will respectfully invoke her Fifth Amendment right to silence and decline to answer questions today even though she would very much like to answer your questions.
She must remain silent because Ms. Maxwell has a habeas petition currently pending that demonstrates that her conviction rests on a fundamentally unfair trial.”
Maxwell filed that habeas corpus petition after her meeting with Blanche and the Supreme Court’s rejection of her case.
After the August interview, Markus indicated to reporters that Maxwell already said everything she knows.
“The deputy attorney general is seeking the truth,” Markus said, according to Vanity Fair. “He asked every possible question, and he’s doing an amazing job.”
Now, Markus is saying that Maxwell can only speak fully and honestly if granted clemency, which raises the question about his client’s previous testimony: Is he conceding that his client’s statements were incomplete, untrue, or both?
Another bailout for Steve Bannon?
The federal government moved on Monday to dismiss Steve Bannon’s indictment for defying a congressional subpoena seeking information about the Jan. 6th attack on the Capitol.
In the lower court, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro filed a dismissal motion, and then Trump’s former defense attorney turned Solicitor General John Sauer took the lead on Bannon’s Supreme Court appeal.
Bannon already has been convicted, sentenced and spent four months in jail.
In an interview, former federal prosecutor Mitchell Epner called the procedural gambit “bizarre.”
“This is extremely unusual and procedurally inappropriate,” Epner said. “It is also bizarre that only Sauer signed this pleadings, with no underlings from the Solicitor General’s office on the brief.”
During Trump’s first term, then-Attorney General Bill Barr’s Justice Department tried to dismiss charges against Michael Flynn following his guilty plea, only for the post-conviction legal fight to have been mooted by Flynn’s pardon. Flynn, however, hadn’t been sentenced.
Trump also pardoned away Bannon’s charges accusing him of conspiring to defraud donors to We Build the Wall, a purported charity operating as a crowdfunding effort to construct a barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border. Bannon’s co-conspirators were ultimately convicted in federal court. State prosecutors later charged Bannon, who accepted a plea deal that allowed him to avoid jail.
Read the filing here.
Look out for the video interview with Mitchell Epner on the All Rise News playlist of Legal AF.
Raid on WaPo reporter’s home sparks complaint
The federal prosecutor who signed off on the search warrant application leading to the raid of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s home is now the subject of a disciplinary complaint before the Virginia State Bar.
The Freedom of the Press Foundation argues that Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg, who previously prosecuted Julian Assange, failed to disclose that the search was barred under the Privacy Protection Act of 1980.
For the group’s chief of advocacy Seth Stern, this omission amounts to a violation of Kromberg’s professional obligation of “candor toward the tribunal.”
“The omission could not have been a mere oversight — the warrant in question was, predictably, a subject of national news, given that raids of journalists’ homes during investigations of alleged leaks by government personnel are, according to experts, unprecedented,” the complaint states. “Under the Department of Justice’s own policies, which were updated just last year following a very public (and misleading) announcement, the search should have been discussed with and authorized by the highest levels of the DOJ, including the Attorney General.”
The Virginia State Bar has been reluctant to act on similar complaints.
Last year, the Bar rejected a complaint against Trump’s ex-White House aide turned would-be prosecutor Lindsey Halligan, finding that any misconduct investigations resulting from her failed prosecutions of James Comey and Letitia James would have to wait for a referral by the courts.
The Campaign for Accountability recently renewed the complaint against Halligan.
In a video interview with All Rise News, the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s Seth Stern urged the disciplinary commission to be less reactive.
“They don’t need to wait for judges to act,” Stern said. “They can act, and the time is now for them to do that, to prove their worth.”
Read the disciplinary complaint here.
Look out for the video interview with Seth Stern on the All Rise News playlist of Legal AF.
Immigration news in brief
During a hearing this morning, Chief U.S. District Judge Jeb Boasberg indicated that he would decide within a week whether and how to provide 137 wrongly deported men a path to challenge their summary expulsions.
Trump’s Justice Department already signaled plans to appeal any pathway for redress, however narrow.
After the American Civil Liberties Union’s attorney Lee Gelernt commented on the ending of a recent government brief, Boasberg quipped: “"I’m used to that tone in this case, unfortunately."
ProPublica and CBS News published blockbuster immigration stories today.
After the photograph of detained child Liam Conejo Ramos captured national attention, sympathy and outrage, ProPublica took a deeper look inside the 5-year-old’s detention center in an investigation titled “The Children of Dilley,” detailing the heartbreaking stories and handwritten letters of others like him.
Balancing the ledger from the delayed “60 Minutes” investigation, CBS News obtained Department of Homeland Security data showing how few of the people detained have criminal records: “Less than 14% of those arrested by ICE in Trump’s 1st year back in office had violent criminal records, document shows.”
As always, a great newsletter! We can see you’re staying busy. Looking forward to what you learn on this upcoming trip. Safe travels. At least the weather is better.
Maxwell doesn’t even tell the truth about her own actions, why would she tell the truth about the involvement of the other predators. ?