Will Pam Bondi attend this deposition? It's her circus, after all. She opened Pandora's Box, and now everyone wants a peek inside -- including House Republicans.
Now that Jeffrey Epstein has become the improbable center of attention all over again, everyone else wants to get in on the action. DoJ officials, possibly including Deputy AG Todd Blanche, will meet with Ghislaine Maxwell today in hopes of finding a way to close Pandora's Box at some point:
Justice Department officials are expected to interview Ghislaine Maxwell, the Jeffrey Epstein associate serving a 20-year federal prison sentence for sex trafficking, in Tallahassee, Fla., on Thursday, according two people with knowledge of the situation. Todd Blanche, the No. 2 official at the department who brokered the meeting, is in Florida, though it was not clear whether he would attend or conduct the interview, one of those people said. The interview is part of the department’s effort to quell criticism that it is concealing details about Epstein’s interactions with high-profile figures, including President Trump.
They moved fast to get ahead of the House Oversight Committee. Chair James Comer wants to have a chat with the surviving partner of the Lolita Express. And by "chat," I mean testimony under oath after the committee issued a subpoena late yesterday. That may present a problem for everyone. Or two. Or three. Or ...:
The deposition will take place at the prison where Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking and related offenses. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has said he will meet with Maxwell in the coming days too.
"I have issued a subpoena to Ghislaine Maxwell for a deposition to occur at Federal Correctional Institution Tallahassee on August 11, 2025," Comer said in a post on X. " The Department of Justice is cooperating and will help facilitate the deposition at the prison."
The subpoena comes a day after a House Oversight subcommittee voted to issue the order. However, any attempt to get a final floor vote on any Epstein-related matter before the House goes on recess later Wednesday is unlikely.
So, problem one is that the House will get forced out of session before much can take place on Epstein-related matters. That is not a coincidence; Speaker Mike Johnson plans to adjourn early to avoid floor votes on such issues, which means that legislative time for matters like the upcoming budget will shrink accordingly. That won't stop this subpoena, though, because the committee can authorize subpoenas without a full House vote. It does mean that Oversight would have to wait a while before doing anything with the information Maxwell gives them -- if any.
That brings us to problem two. Maxwell is currently appealing her conviction at the Supreme Court, and a decision on whether to even hear the case will not come until at least October, when their new term begins. Subpoena or no, Maxwell can't afford to testify while she's asking for either a new trial or to at least vacate her conviction. Maxwell's allies claim she wants to talk, but she will demand a deal to do so that would involve getting out of prison, permanently.
That brings us to the third problem, at least for Comer. Deputy AG Todd Blanche also plans to chat up Maxwell in prison, who may end up being the Belle of the Ball at the joint for August at this rate. Comer can't cut the deal Maxwell wants, but Blanche could. So which interview do you think Maxwell will be inclined to grant, if any at all?
And here's the fourth problem, one that colors all of these efforts. Let's assume that Maxwell talks without a deal on the table, even though she'd be an idiot to do so. Who in their right mind thinks Maxwell can be trusted to tell the truth, even in part? Is that a common trait among people who traffic minors for sex work? Whose bright idea was it to make Maxwell into some sort of oracle for all things Epstein?
All of this intense interest in her testimony puts her in a pretty good position to manipulate everyone by telling them what they want to hear, regardless of the truth, too. And what would she have to lose to exploit that? She's a little more likely to die in custody, according to actuarial tables, than to walk out without a deal. She's 63 now and has been in custody for five years, so she has 15 years to serve and must do at least 85% of the 20-year term before parole eligibility in the federal system. She'll be 75ish the first time she becomes eligible in 2037. If others can't do that math, you'd better believe Maxwell can.
Finally, let's set all of this aside and assume Maxwell testifies without cutting a deal, does so honestly, and names names. What then? It's not usable. The statute of limitations on these crimes passed years ago. Civil claims by the victims have no statute of limitations, thanks to a 2022 law eliminating those restrictions, but that law doesn't apply to criminal prosecutions. At the very least, prosecuting the 'clients' would be an extremely heavy lift for the Department of Justice at this point, which is one reason the DoJ only prosecuted Maxwell for trafficking these victims to Epstein himself. They could prove that in court rather easily, and did so expeditiously and effectively without unnecessary complications.
All of this is the long way around the promise Bondi made initially, which was to release all of the data held by the DoJ on Epstein. That turned out to be a lot harder to accomplish, in part because of the nature of the crimes, in part because of Maxwell's ongoing litigation, and in part because it's mainly grand-jury testimony under seal. Yesterday, a judge refused to unseal one of the transcripts, which should come as no surprise at all. Judges don't like to allow grand jury testimony to be made public anyway because it's not the same as trial testimony. There are different rules in grand juries, and usually no adversarial response to test the claims for veracity or admissibility for trial. These transcripts contain descriptions and evidence of sex crimes, plus allegations likely amounting to inadmissible hearsay, and without enough evidence for prosecutors to get indictments on others.
Bondi made a promise that she couldn't deliver on, and has tried to skate around it ever since. That has blown up in everyone's faces, including her boss':
When Justice Department officials reviewed what Attorney General Pam Bondi called a “truckload” of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein earlier this year, they discovered that Donald Trump’s name appeared multiple times, according to senior administration officials.
In May, Bondi and her deputy informed the president at a meeting in the White House that his name was in the Epstein files, the officials said. Many other high-profile figures were also named, Trump was told. Being mentioned in the records isn’t a sign of wrongdoing. ...
They told the president at the meeting that the files contained what officials felt was unverified hearsay about many people, including Trump, who had socialized with Epstein in the past, some of the officials said. One of the officials familiar with the documents said they contain hundreds of other names.
This is precisely why the judges won't release the grand jury testimony. It likely contains a lot of hearsay and irrelevant references to others. The grand jury process allows the grand jurors to see more data than trial jurors get in order to make an informed decision on whether to indict targeted individuals, but that process requires secrecy because of its nature. The rush to pander to the base by blowing the Epstein Files into a MAGA cause celebre has backfired in this sense, although the damage will likely be minimal. But it also demonstrates the danger of simply publicizing the names in these records as though they confirm some sort of complicity in the Epstein trafficking operation.
My prediction will be that Maxwell won't talk without a deal. Whether she gets one depends on how desperate Bondi is to strike oil in this dry hole. And at this point, I have no prediction to give on that.
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