Ghislaine Maxwell’s Deposition Briefly Delayed
Ghislaine Maxwell’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee wrapped up quickly, just under an hour after it started on Monday morning. The former associate of Jeffrey Epstein, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence in a Texas prison, opted to invoke the Fifth Amendment during her questioning.
Maxwell appeared via video link as part of a bipartisan inquiry into how the federal government approached the Epstein case. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, along with Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, had anticipated that she would plead the Fifth before the session commenced.
She was convicted in December 2021 for her involvement in Epstein’s operation to exploit and traffic underage girls. The Justice Department, during sentencing, accused Maxwell of luring minors and facilitating their abuse in various manners.
Comer mentioned that they were hoping to get Maxwell to testify at a conference regarding a former president’s detention. Notably, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton faced contempt of Congress for not participating in the Epstein inquiry.
“We had been working to arrange her deposition, and even though our legal team indicated she would be the fifth individual to testify, we set a tentative date of February 9th for Ghislaine Maxwell to appear before us,” Comer remarked previously.
Discussions around this deposition faced obstacles when both Maxwell and the Clintons agreed to come to the Capitol through their legal representatives just before the House was set to vote on potential criminal charges against them with the Department of Justice.
Maxwell’s attorneys had been negotiating with Comer’s team for several months to finalize a date for her to speak with the committee. At one point, she agreed to delay her deposition, which was originally set for August, at her lawyers’ request. They advised her to wait for a Supreme Court decision regarding her appeal, which was ultimately declined in October.
The depositions of both Maxwell and the Clintons form part of the House Oversight Committee’s ongoing investigation into the handling of the Epstein matter by the government.
