Trump has said he is allowed to give Ghislaine Maxwell a pardon
President Donald Trump said he is “allowed” to pardon Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime Jeffrey Epstein associate serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking and abuse, but noted that no one has asked him to do so and that it would be “inappropriate” to discuss the matter further.
Trump made the remarks—among his most detailed yet about Maxwell—during a press availability on July 28 at his Trump Turnberry golf resort in Scotland, where he was meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
When asked by a reporter whether he would “ever consider” granting a pardon to Maxwell, who recently spent two days meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to discuss Epstein-related matters, Trump responded:
“Well, I'm allowed to give her a pardon, but nobody's approached me with it. Nobody's asked me about it,” he said. “It's in the news about that, that aspect of it, but right now, it would be inappropriate to talk about it.”
Blanche, who previously served as Trump’s personal defense attorney, has faced scrutiny over the meetings with Maxwell, which critics claim are part of a broader White House effort to manage fallout from the administration’s handling of thousands of Epstein-related files.
Later during the exchange, Trump also pushed back on questions surrounding Attorney General Pam Bondi and whether she informed him that his name appears in federal Epstein documents, as reported by the Wall Street Journal last week.
“I haven't been overly interested in it,” Trump said. “It's a hoax that's been built up way beyond proportion.”
Without offering evidence, Trump then claimed that former President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, FBI Director James Comey, and Attorney General Merrick Garland may have inserted fake or damaging material about him into the files.
“I can say this. Those files were run by the worst scum on Earth. They were run by Comey, they were run by Garland, they were run by Biden and all of the people that actually ran the government, including the autopen,” Trump said, referring to the Biden administration. “Those files were run for four years by those people. If they had anything [on me], I assume they would have released it.”
Trump also brushed aside a separate Wall Street Journal report claiming he once drew the outline of a nude woman in a birthday letter for Epstein, which was later included in a book compiled by Maxwell featuring contributions from other high-profile figures, including former President Bill Clinton.