U.S. President Donald Trump considered pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell after her 2020 arrest because he feared what she might reveal about their shared history with Jeffrey Epstein, according to author Michael Wolff.
Wolff, who has written four books about Trump, claimed he was wary about what Maxwell could say after the FBI arrested her in July 2020 on charges of helping Epstein run a sex trafficking network.
Highlights
- Trump considered pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell fearing she might reveal details about their shared history with Jeffrey Epstein.
- Author Michael Wolff described Trump and Epstein as close friends who shared women and a strong personal bond for 15 years.
- Despite Trump's interest, his inner circle opposed pardoning Maxwell, and he ultimately decided against it.
- Maxwell was convicted in 2021 on sex trafficking charges and sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022.
- The White House denied pardon talks ever happened, while a DOJ memo confirmed Epstein died by suicide, not murder.
Image credits: The White House/ Flickr
Trump started asking, “What could she say—what would she say?” Wolff told The Daily Beast Podcast.
Maxwell, now 63, was accused of luring and grooming underage girls for Epstein, a convicted sex offender. Epstein and Trump had been close friends since the 1980s.
Wolff described them as “two guys joined at the hip for a good 15 years.”
Wolff told podcast host Joanna Coles, “They did everything together. From sharing, pursuing women, hunting women, sharing at least one girlfriend for at least a year, and this kind of rich-guy relationship with each other’s planes.”
“I dare say they kind of loved each other,” he added. “These [sic] were brothers in arms for a long time.”
Wolff said Trump and Epstein were often seen together. In a 2017 interview that Epstein did with Wolff, Epstein described himself as Trump’s “closest friend” and claimed to know intimate details about Trump’s personal life.
Image credits: Davidoff Studios/Getty Images
As Maxwell’s case moved toward trial, Wolff said Trump considered using his executive powers to pardon her. However, members of Trump’s inner circle strongly opposed the idea.
“Everybody around him was kind of like, ‘God, we hope she won’t say anything, but we really hope he doesn’t pardon her,’” Wolff said.
Trump eventually decided against it. Still, when asked publicly about Maxwell, he took a surprising tone.
“I just wish her well, frankly. I’ve met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach, and I guess they lived in Palm Beach,” Trump told reporters in 2020. “I wish her well, whatever it is.”
When Axios reporter Jonathan Swan asked in response, “Why you would wish such a person well?” Trump replied, “She’s now in jail, so yeah, I wish her well. I would wish you well. I would wish a lot of people well. Good luck. Let them prove somebody was guilty.”
Maxwell did not testify in her trial. In 2021, a jury found her guilty on five of six federal charges, including sex trafficking of a minor. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022.
Trump was allegedly wary of what Maxwell could say about their shared history with Epstein
Image credits: Joe Schildhorn/Getty Images
When asked about Wolff’s comments by The Daily Beast, White House communications director Steven Cheung strongly denied the claims.
“Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s**t and has been proven to be a fraud. He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain,” Cheung said.
A senior White House official also told The Daily Beast that no talks about pardoning Maxwell ever took place during Trump’s presidency.
Meanwhile, a leaked Justice Department memo recently concluded that Epstein, who died in jail in 2019, was not murdered and did not maintain a list of powerful clients.
It states that Epstein died by suicide in a Manhattan jail while waiting for his trial for sex trafficking charges.
During his 2024 election campaign, Trump had promised to release the so-called Epstein Files—a collection of evidence gathered by investigators working on the multiple criminal cases that were brought against Epstein and his associates, based on which he was eventually convicted for sex trafficking of minors.
Attorney General Pam Bondi also previously said the client list was “sitting on my desk right now to review.”
However, when some records were released earlier this year, they mostly included already-public information: there was no ‘bombshell’ list, as expected.
Image credits: TheDemocrats
Trump’s friendship with Epstein got renewed attention recently after Elon Musk said Trump was implicated in the files during a public feud in early June.
“@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public,” Musk wrote in a now-deleted tweet.
According to a 2021 Business Insider story based on Wolff’s book Landslide, about the final days of Trump’s first presidency, the president reportedly asked about Maxwell, “Has she said anything about me? Is she going to talk? Will she roll on anybody?”
Wolff reported in the book that he would frequently interrupt conversations to ask: “Who do you think should be pardoned? Give me one person—who's your top pick?”