House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer stirred controversy Tuesday when he claimed that Ghislaine Maxwell “exonerated” Donald Trump during her Department of Justice interview. Maxwell, a convicted sex trafficker and longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein, is currently serving a 20-year sentence.
Comer’s comments came during testimony before the House Rules Committee, the same day his committee released thousands of Epstein-related files, many of which were already public. When asked about possibly holding a hearing on Maxwell’s transfer to a different, more comfortable prison after her July interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Comer pushed back.
“You want to have a whole hearing, a whole entire hearing not about the victims, not about a government coverup, not about human trafficking, but about Maxwell, who you all were begging to be deposed, and I did the subpoena,” Comer told Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez, a Democrat from New Mexico. “Now you’re mad because she exonerated Trump.”
Leger Fernandez responded sharply, saying the victims themselves had expressed outrage over Maxwell’s favorable treatment. “It is indeed a re-traumatization that someone who has done such horrible things is then treated favorably under these conditions,” she said.
According to transcripts from her multi-day interview with Blanche—who was once Trump’s personal attorney—Maxwell went out of her way to praise the former president. “Trump was always very cordial and very kind to me. And I just want to say that I find—I admire his extraordinary achievement in becoming the President now,” Maxwell said. “I like him, and I’ve always liked him.”
Days after the interview, Maxwell was moved from a Florida prison to a minimum-security facility in Texas with no guard towers or cell blocks, which many critics have described as a significant upgrade.
“For her to be put up in what I would call it, a posh prison, a minimum security prison, is an insult,” said Sky Roberts, the brother of deceased Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre, in an interview with CNN. He added, “President Trump himself stated that people that have sex-trafficked across borders should be held to the harshest penalties. And yet we’re seeing the exact opposite right now in the sense that she’s being transferred to a minimum security prison, which I’ll just state as the ‘Real Housewives’ prison.”
Maxwell’s case continues to anger victims’ families, who say her prison conditions are far too lenient for the severity of her crimes. The transfer, combined with her glowing remarks about Trump, has only fueled speculation and frustration among lawmakers and the public alike.