WASHINGTON: Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell refused on Monday to answer questions from a US congressional committee, invoking her legal right against self-incrimination, lawmakers said.<\/p>\n
Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking, was subpoenaed to testify before the House Oversight Committee to discuss her relations with the disgraced financier.<\/p>\n
Republican committee chairman James Comer said Maxwell had invoked her right to not incriminate herself, guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs expected, Ghislaine Maxwell took the Fifth and refused to answer any questions,\u201d Comer told reporters. \u201cThis is obviously very disappointing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had many questions to ask about the crimes she and Epstein committed as well as questions about potential co-conspirators,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Maxwell\u2019s lawyers told the House panel that the former British socialite was prepared to testify only if she was first granted clemency by President Donald Trump, Comer said.<\/p>\n
The lawyers had pushed for Congress to grant her legal immunity in order to testify, but lawmakers refused.<\/p>\n
Maxwell is the only person convicted of a crime in connection with Epstein, who died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking.<\/p>\n
The 64-year-old Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of supplying underage girls to the wealthy financier, who had ties to top business executives, politicians, celebrities and academics.<\/p>\n
Maxwell was scheduled to testify virtually from the Texas prison where she is serving her sentence.<\/p>\n
Her deposition comes amid the release by the Justice Department of millions of documents, photographs and videos related to the investigation into Epstein.<\/p>\n
The Justice Department has said no new prosecutions are expected but a number of political and business leaders have been tarnished by scandal or resigned after their ties with Epstein were revealed in the files.<\/p>\n
The House committee has also summoned former Democratic president Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton to testify about their interactions with Epstein.<\/p>\n
The Clintons have called for their depositions to be held publicly to prevent Republicans from politicizing their testimony.<\/p>\n
Trump was once a close friend of Epstein but has not been called to testify by the House Oversight Committee, which is led by members of his Republican Party.<\/p>\n
Neither the Clintons nor Trump have been accused of any wrongdoing related to Epstein.<\/p>\n
Last year Maxwell was moved to a minimum-security prison in Texas after meeting twice with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who previously served as Trump\u2019s personal lawyer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell refused on Monday to answer questions from a US congressional committee, invoking her legal right against self-incrimination, lawmakers said. Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking, was subpoenaed to testify before the House Oversight Committee to discuss her relations with the disgraced financier. Republican committee …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":93490,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93475"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93491,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93475\/revisions\/93491"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}