condemned the idea of a Maxwell pardon<\/a> and said Democrats on the committee uniformly oppose it.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s outrageous that Republicans on the Oversight Committee are considering a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell,\u201d Garcia said in a statement. \u201cShe is a sexual abuser who facilitated the rape of women and children.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Times reached out to all 26 Republicans on the committee to see who, if anyone, supported the idea of a pardon.<\/p>\n
Although most didn\u2019t respond, the few who did expressed outrage at the idea.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am absolutely not supporting a pardon for her nor have I heard that from anyone else,\u201d Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNever in a thousand years,\u201d Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) said.<\/p>\n
Maxwell declined to answer the committee\u2019s questions during a video deposition in February from the Texas federal prison where she is serving her 20-year sentence.<\/p>\n
She still is challenging her 2021 conviction on five counts related to the sex trafficking of minors for her role in recruiting and grooming girls for Epstein to abuse. She was accused at trial of also participating in the abuse of one victim.<\/p>\n
At the time of her February deposition, Maxwell\u2019s attorney David Oscar Markus said she would offer the \u201cunfiltered truth\u201d if granted clemency by Trump.<\/p>\n
Attorneys who have represented victims abused by Epstein and Maxwell strongly opposed the idea of a pardon.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a woman who belongs behind bars for the rest of her life for what she did to women,\u201d said Spencer Kuvin, who has represented numerous Epstein victims.<\/p>\n
Sigrid McCawley, a managing partner at Boies Schiller Flexner, questioned the value of information Maxwell could provide.<\/p>\n
\u201cGhislaine Maxwell is a proven self-serving liar,\u201d McCawley said in a statement. \u201cThere is nothing credible that she will offer the government, and the assertion that she would provide information is simply a smoke screen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has not said he is considering a pardon, but when asked by reporters he has declined to rule it out.<\/p>\n
Epstein abused more than 1,000 girls and young women over the span of decades. He negotiated a lenient deal nearly two decades ago with federal prosecutors in south Florida that allowed him to serve 13 months in a Palm Beach County jail, where he was allowed to come and go freely, to settle claims that he had abused dozens of high school girls.<\/p>\n
Following investigative reporting on that deal by the Miami Herald, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York brought new sex charges against Epstein in July 2019. He died in federal custody one month later.<\/p>\n
Epstein and Maxwell counted members of the British royal family, multiple presidents and business titans among their friends. They have been accused of forcing victims to have sex with some of those men. Maxwell is the only other person who has been charged in connection with Epstein\u2019s crimes.<\/p>\n
The committee has deposed numerous people who knew Epstein, including Ohio billionaire Les Wexner, who hired Epstein to manage his finances, and former President Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n
The committee has not, however, deposed Trump, who once famously called Epstein a \u201cterrific guy\u201d and said \u201cI just wish her well\u201d when told of Maxwell\u2019s arrest in 2020.<\/p>\n
The Department of Justice has released millions of pages of documents from its investigations in response to the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was signed into law last year. <\/p>\n
The release led to criminal inquiries in the United Kingdom into Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former prince, and Peter Mandelson, the former British ambassador to the United States, over allegations that they provided secret government information to Epstein.<\/p>\n
So far, the files have not led to any publicly known criminal investigations in the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee said some members would support a presidential pardon for convicted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[17289,9349,13052,14627,121442,4681,348,35251,48,52,51,121443,47,50,49,59118,2324,3020,121441,2601,1557],"class_list":{"0":"post-282764","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-committee","9":"tag-exchange","10":"tag-february","11":"tag-federal-prosecutor","12":"tag-ghislaine-maxwell-pardon","13":"tag-idea","14":"tag-investigation","15":"tag-jeffrey-epstein","16":"tag-la","17":"tag-la-headlines","18":"tag-la-news","19":"tag-lenient-deal","20":"tag-los-angeles","21":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","22":"tag-los-angeles-news","23":"tag-maxwell","24":"tag-member","25":"tag-president-trump","26":"tag-presidential-pardon","27":"tag-victim","28":"tag-woman"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}