In Congress today, Jeffrey Epstein’s British consiglieri and procurer of victims, Ghislaine Maxwell, made a play for a presidential pardon. She was beamed into the House Oversight Committee via video link from the cushy Texan prison camp she was moved to last year.
Maxwell is playing the long game. She has been angling for a presidential pardon ever since the Epstein scandal resurged into the public mind last year. She refused to answer any questions from the Committee, pleading the Fifth, while her lawyer said that she would only provide more information in return to clemency. The strategy is clear: tempt President Trump into pardoning her in return for helping to keep him out of the spotlight. In case it wasn’t obvious enough, Maxwell reportedly said that she was willing to testify that neither Trump nor Bill Clinton did anything wrong during the friendships with Epstein.
A couple things worth noting here. First, Trump has not ruled out a pardon for Maxwell, saying that he is “allowed to do it” and he will “look at” it. No one is so naïve nowadays to think that Trump would hesitate before using the presidential pardon in order to protect himself. The question is whether he thinks the blowback would be worth it.
Which is perhaps unlikely given that if Trump does pardon Maxwell, then the only person in prison from the scandal would have been freed by someone who is struggling to shake his own association with Epstein. That won’t go down well with a public primed to turn on an elite class who simply look after their own.
The second thing to note is that Congress is unlikely to let the Epstein story drift into the history books. Rep Ro Khanna, who was behind the Act that forced the government to release the files, and is on the Oversight Committee, said that Maxwell must be immediately sent back to a maximum security prison, and that all those listed who emailed Epstein about visiting his island should be called in to testify. Bill and Hillary Clinton are already due to appear before the Committee at the end of February.
That is all to say that the Epstein scandal will continue to permeate politics at large. Over the weekend, Senator Jon Ossoff went viral for inveighing against what he called the “Epstein class” (a moniker first coined by Khanna). The fact a potential Democratic presidential nominee from the moderate wing of the party is now using this phrase suggests that an upcoming generation of politicians recognise the force of indicting an entire power structure. For Ossoff, the Epstein class wasn’t just those in the financier’s circle, but the entire Trump administration, a “government of, by and for the rich”. I can’t imagine these politicians retiring such potent rhetoric any time soon.
[Further reading: The Ice backlash won’t stop Maga]
Content from our partners
Related
Join the debate
Subscribe here to comment