Could Ghislaine Maxwell walk free?

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1:00sort of a witch hunt, just a continuation of the witch hunt. So Donald Trump doesn't know and hasn't taken much interest in the biggest firestorm to engulf his presidency since he returned to the White House. It is extraordinary that the Deputy Attorney General would be going to re-interview Ghislaine Maxwell when a court has found her guilty and she has been sentenced.

1:27The News Agents Hosts:So what is all this about? Is Trump trying to buy her silence? Is he trying to show more transparency to those who believe he's covering stuff up? Is Ghislaine Maxwell about to walk free? Welcome to the News Agents.

1:49The News Agents Hosts:The News Agents. It's Emily. It's John. And as you will know by now, there has been something of a meltdown within Trump's base, his MAGA base, over his response to what we used to call the Epstein files. In other words, this idea that there was a potential client list, that there were potential leads on who else knew what else about the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. And Trump has not been handling this very well. He has, in the last two weeks, told reporters and told the electorate, there is nothing to see here. Just put it down. Move on. Grow up. MAGA is determined to get to the bottom of this.

2:35The News Agents Hosts:And so in the last 24 hours, we have come to learn that the Justice Department is about to interview Guilherme Maxwell. You will remember that she's serving a 20 year prison sentence for essentially abetting, aiding Epstein for child sex trafficking, for other crimes connected to Epstein. And she is going to sit down with Todd Blanche, who is the deputy attorney general working under Pam Bondi. And it could be as early as next week. in which case what do they want to hear from her that she hasn't already said? The whole thing is bewildering and if you don't arch an eyebrow over this you're never going to arch an eyebrow over anything because as you say Emily the court has ruled, the jury pronounced, the sentence was delivered and she's in prison.

3:35Donald Trump's problems, though, are getting worse and worse and worse. And is there some kind of sweetheart deal that is about to be laid out for Ghislaine Maxwell, the only person convicted of anything to do with the appalling crimes that Jeffrey Epstein was responsible for? whereby, I don't know, she comes out, makes a statement saying, I know Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were very close friends, but I can guarantee you that Donald Trump had absolutely no involvement in anything that was untoward. And yes, though they were close at one stage, that had all gone. I don't know. I mean, what is there for the attorney general to say?

4:19Yeah. The idea as well, by the way, that Donald Trump knew absolutely nothing about it. There is not a cat's chance in hell that the deputy attorney general, Donald Trump's former attorney, is going to see Ghislaine Maxwell without Donald Trump being 100 percent across it.

4:36The News Agents Hosts:Yeah. So even before her criminal case, Maxwell had already testified twice in civil lawsuits that came from the allegations about her role in Epstein's crimes. She fiercely denied at the time the existence of a criminal conspiracy or of a large sex trafficking ring or operation. And the DOJ at the time charged her with perjuring herself in those depositions. She has not given that version of events to federal prosecutors. And government prosecutors say that they never even broached the subject of plea negotiations where such an interview might have occurred. So I guess the question is, is Maxwell being invited to speak now because Trump slash the DOJ thinks it will help to create the impression of openness?

5:36The News Agents Hosts:Is that what they want? Do they want to say, look, you know, we reached out. We've told her that she can tell us about any names that she wants. But look, she's got nothing to say. There are no other names, nothing. and then she goes back into the slammer. That's one world. There's another world in which she comes and she says, well, what am I doing this for? Presumably, she gets some kind of sweetheart deal, some kind of plea deal and says, I'll tell you anything you need to know, but please cut my sentence in half or even commute it. I mean, Trump has the power, as we know, to pardon, to commute a sentence entirely.

6:14The News Agents Hosts:And you might remember an interview he did with Axios a few years ago when she was first convicted, at which he was bizarrely friendly about her. Generous. Listen. You said, quote, I just wish her well, frankly. I've met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach, but I wish her well, whatever it is. Mr President, Ghislaine Maxwell has been arrested on allegations of child sex trafficking. Why would you wish such a person well? Well, first of all, I don't know that, but I do know that... She has. She's been arrested for that. Her friend or boyfriend... Epstein. ...was either killed or committed suicide in jail.

6:51She's now in jail. Uh-huh. Yeah, I wish her well. I'd wish you well. I'd wish a lot of people well. Good luck. Let them prove somebody was guilty. I mean, you do know that she's... Oh, so you're saying you hope she doesn't die in jail. Is that what you mean by wish her well? Her boyfriend died in jail, and people are still trying to figure out how did it happen. Was it suicide? Was he killed? And I do wish her well. I'm not looking for anything bad for her. I'm not looking bad for anybody. And they took that... I mean, she's a child, alleged child, sex trafficking. Such a big deal. But all it is is her boyfriend died.

7:22He died in jail. Was he killed? Was it suicide? I do. I wish her well. If you think of all the times that you've heard Donald Trump lacerate anyone who stands in his way and that they're a villain and they need to be thrown in prison and they need to throw away the keys and these people are rotten to the core. You know, no, Donald Trump's default position is not natural generosity. And yet you felt with Ghislaine Maxwell, there was this extraordinary generosity of spirit towards her because, you know, Trump was good friends with Epstein for a good many years. And apparently they only fell out not over anything that Epstein was doing, but over bidding for some property in Florida where they were up against each other.

8:08And there was a battle over, you know, a real estate deal. That was all that ended the relationship. Trump and Epstein used to hang out together and Trump used to hang out with Epstein and Melania and Ghislaine and they would go out together. So Ghislaine is a kind of linchpin figure in all of this. And if you think of the problems that Magaland is having over this way, what you've had is Magaland has been setting the fire. They have been the people who've been setting everything alight in firing up this conspiracy theory. And Donald Trump now finds himself with Pan Bondi as the fire engines trying to put the fire out.

8:49and you can't simultaneously be the arsonist and the fire chief who's trying to extinguish the flames because that seems to be what Donald Trump is doing at the moment and that's why Ghislaine Maxwell suddenly is assuming huge importance because of the growing problems over Epstein now if she comes out and makes a statement that is suddenly I don't know suddenly says things that we'd never heard before about Donald Trump being this fine upstanding character who's never done anything wrong. Will the American public buy that? I mean, will people buy the sudden, oh, and she's suddenly free from prison?

9:24The News Agents Hosts:I mean, it's hard to see because ahead of her trial, which was what, 2022, she argued in court papers that the allegations against both her and Epstein were so old, I mean, many of them stretch back to the 1990s, that there was very little reliable information that would be left to her to disclose. And she said, you know, if you talk to witnesses, their memories may have faded, they may even have died. She said that corroborating documents that she might be able to rely on to prove her version of events had long been destroyed. In other words, she made clear at the time that she didn't know more than she already said.

10:02The News Agents Hosts:You know, there is a category in the file there which is labelled dead witnesses and lost testimony. In other words, she's already said there is nothing more that you can do. There is nowhere else to pursue. So it sort of makes you wonder whether the whole thing is just kind of for show. It is entirely possible in the Donald Trump world that he goes about this whole process to kind of invite her in. Look, we're doing everything you wanted. She's the witness. We're calling her in. And oh, she couldn't tell us anything. Back she goes. I think it's also worth bringing in comments from her brother.

10:38The News Agents Hosts:Yes. Made very recently. Ian Maxwell, who is clearly worried about his system. sister his belief remains that epstein probably didn't kill himself in jail you'll remember that there was actually an earlier suicide attempt jeffrey epstein did try and commit suicide i think the month before they found him but recovered him with sort of you know sheets or or towels or tied into a rope around his neck but then why this is a sort of whole other i'm going to say conspiracy theory or theory, is that the tape on the night of Jeffrey Epstein's death has this weird missing three minutes. Pam Bondi has tried to argue that it was the same tape used over and over again.

11:24The News Agents Hosts:And it's always the same little bit of it that's missing. In other words, they didn't change the tape, but it was always the missing three minutes. But why haven't they released the tape to prove that? Why haven't they shut it down? And Ian Maxwell believes that Jeffrey Epstein was probably killed in prison, or at least he is saying that because he fears that his sister is in trouble. Exactly. And that is the kind of fascinating point that you now have Ghislaine Maxwell's brother saying, I worry that my sister could also be killed, that there are powerful people who do not want to hear what she has got to say.

12:00And therefore I fear for her own safety, which leaves you in this odd position. that you could either be saying that the two most probable outcomes, and, you know, is one that Ghislaine Maxwell is going to be bumped off in prison or that she's going to walk free from prison because there's going to be some kind of sweetheart deal. And this would be the most extraordinary turn of events. Now, maybe it is all fanciful, but Ian Maxwell has clearly got concerns. And you've got the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, former attorney of Donald Trump, equally concerned about maybe different things, but finds it necessary to go and visit her in prison over the next day or so.

12:45And you've got Donald Trump, Buddha-like, saying, oh, I don't know anything about it.

12:50The News Agents Hosts:Well, let's speak now to Randy Zellin. He's a defence attorney in the US and can maybe talk us through some of the sort of legal barriers now or legal complications that will present itself with this meeting with the DOJ. Randy, it's great to have you on the newsagents again. How are you? I'm good. Thank you very much for having me on. Just talk us through how you see this case now proceeding. Well, let's reverse engineer it and let's start at the end. What does Ghislaine Maxwell want? She wants to go home. Does she really care how she gets there? Probably not. So what are the pathways for her to get home?

13:30Under the United States rule of law, when it comes to federal criminal practice, a judge has the opportunity to resentence a sentenced defendant when that defendant has provided what we call substantial assistance to the government. In other words, that person becomes a cooperator. If the government is satisfied with that person's cooperation, at that point, the government makes a motion. They do it by letter to the judge saying, hey, Judge, Randy was terrific. He helped us go after other people. He helped us prosecute other people. He was a great help. Why don't you resentence Randy? So that's the good news for Ghislaine Maxwell.

14:17Problem is, as you noted a moment ago, there are rules. And under this particular rule, which is Rule 35, Rule 35 makes it more difficult when the government wants to make that motion after one year. And one of the criteria is, did the defendant just come into this information now? Or did the government only first need this information now? And that's why we had to wait a year. So that's the way she gets home through the Department of Justice and the court system. Now, the other way she can get home is through the Department of Justice and the president by way of either a pardon, which is all sins are forgiven.

15:03Let's forget like this ever happened or her sentence is commuted. In other words, you can go home as of today. So what do you think is what's the direction of travel at the moment, given the fact that the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, is on his way to see her? The more plausible path is she cooperates, which means she's going to have to give the government information to allow the government to at least think about prosecuting other people. At that point, the government would make a motion to the judge. That is, I think, on its face, the more plausible path. Then, of course, she can just seek a pardon or a commutation of her sentence, which I think would probably draw a lot of raised eyebrows from the standpoint of, come on, you've got to be kidding me.

15:51What did she have to do to get a pardon? American public opinion, and I know you're talking to us from New York, Donald Trump and the White House are trying to say, It's only the beltway. It's only people in the fevered hothouse atmosphere of Washington, D.C., in the swamp, in that fetid air, who are talking about Ghislaine Maxwell. Do you think this is going wider and therefore potentially is, I don't know, more difficult for Donald Trump than most other things we've seen? I think that there are other external factors at play which either put pressure on or relieve pressure. If the economy is going well, if we are getting rid of people who don't belong here, if the streets are safer, if there aren't a million wars going on that we're being dragged into, if our place on the world stage is more secure, if the price of eggs doesn't lead someone to have to take out a new credit card to pay for a dozen eggs, that really is what I think most people care about.

16:53and to the extent that people have money at the end of the week and can put food on the table for their families, what may happen with Ghislaine Maxwell becomes less important. Of course, conversely, if everything is going to hell in a handbasket and we have nothing to do but bitch and moan, then we will look for any reason to take shots at anyone.

17:14The News Agents Hosts:Randy Zellen, fabulous as always to hear from you. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

17:27It's so interesting in American politics that, of course, you've got a judiciary that is separate from the executive. But, of course, the Department of Justice, the Attorney General is appointed by the president. And the blurring, maybe the bleeding of politics into judicial matters is obvious. And this is now a political problem. problem and we're seeing it manifest itself not just in the deputy attorney general going to see

17:54The News Agents Hosts:Ghislaine Maxwell but in congress as well I mean just hours after the DOJ said they want to interview Maxwell House republicans have said they want to subpoena her as well in other words call her in get her deposition as a witness and it is all back to this republican representative Tim Bircher of Tennessee. We mentioned him last week. And he has basically put forward a motion to seek approval of the subpoena to get her before Congress. And so if you like, even though these two things are going on simultaneously, they're separate and they're also wanting different things, right? The DOJ are trying to get Trump's name clear.

18:34The News Agents Hosts:That's what we think. That's what Randy Zellin seemed to suggest there. But the House, the congressmen and women who want to subpoena her, they don't want to see her free at all. You know, they think she's the only manifestation of any judicial action against Epstein and they want to bring more into that ring. That's what it's about. The more you think about it, the more it is impossible that it's just about her exculpating Donald Trump. Because then you would be in a position where if she got pardoned, there would be no one. Well, that's the point. It doesn't look great for him. There would be no one responsible who was paying any price for what Epstein did.

19:13The News Agents Hosts:But then maybe he's more worried about himself and his name and his reputation than he is about what Maga's kind of asking him to do. And in a moment, the growth of the far right in America and the journalist Mehdi Hassan, who's been on this podcast before, his brush with it.

19:39Hey man, you hungry? Let's order delivery. Yeah, I was thinking... Italian. Burgers? Oh. Game night just got tense. Two bros on different sides of the fence. Burgers or pasta tonight. Why can't we have food without the fight? With Wonder, you can combine 20 restaurants in one delivery, so no one has to settle. Download the app today. Wonder. Food without the fight. This is The News Agents. My family lineage is settlers from the 1500s, so I have some stake in the claim here. A little different than yours. But you're a descendant of immigrants. Settlers. Colonialists. Yeah, Colonials. You don't look very Native American to me.

20:26I am Native American. Whites are Native Americans. What are you talking about? You're not. What are you talking about? Whites are Native Americans. Really? So far, every one of my assumptions about you has been correct. But listen to me. I am an immigrant. I'm speaking from personal experience. I should get the hell out. I should get the hell out. Yes. Why? I don't want you here. You're a little bit more than a far-right Republican. Hey, what can I say? I think you can say I'm a fascist. Yeah, I am.

20:53Absolutely. I'm just checking who's clapping just to get my set of where everyone is on this. Because you know that millions of people are going to be watching you on YouTube and checking out who the fascists and the Nazis are. I'm not ashamed of that whatsoever. No, clearly you're not. Clearly you're not.

21:04The News Agents Hosts:So what we have just played you there is a clip of a YouTube show called Surrounded. It's made by Jubilee. And the guest at the centre of it is the journalist, the broadcaster, Mehdi Hassan. He's the editor-in-chief and CEO of ZTO News. And if you see it on the screen, you'll see Mehdi kind of sitting at a desk facing one, I don't know, member of the opposition, if you like, at a time with a ring full of people around him. And as you heard from the clips, the people that Mehdi was coming up against were self-described fascists, self-described Nazis. I mean, people who were trying to send Mehdi Hassan home.

21:50The News Agents Hosts:I don't think they meant to the UK, Mehdi, but Mehdi's joining us now. Just tell us how you got into that circle in the first place. Yeah, thank you for having me, John and Emily. It is a very popular Gen Z-ish show called Surrounded. I'm old, I'm 46 years old, I want to go where the youth are. And I was told by a lot of people, this has got the big audiences. I'd seen the Ben Shapiro's, Charlie Kirk's, Jordan Peterson's on the right do this show on Jubilee, tens of millions of views online. I thought, look, this is a good place to go get a new audience and challenge some people on the right who I don't normally get to challenge.

22:23So I went on thinking I'm going on with, you know, 25 Trump supporters, far right, conservative, self-styled. That in itself is a little bit iffy. Who self-identifies as far right proudly. But that's the country we're in right now. You know, a lot of Trump supporters are very proud of those kind of titles. But what I didn't expect is, as you played in the clip, people turning up saying, I'm a fascist, people saying white genocide, people saying, get out of my country to me, a naturalized American citizen, people saying some really odious stuff on a bunch of different issues. And I think that's why this show has kind of gone so crazy viral.

22:55My phone has exploded over the past couple of days is because I think we all knew that there are a lot of odious people in the MAGA base, but to see them so emboldened and on camera saying the kind of stuff that before people would never have the guts to say out loud, that is scary. Does it cause concern, outrage that this is being said now? Or I kind of hate talking about the Overton window, but has the Overton window moved in such a direction that this is now acceptable stuff? No, it's a very good question, John. And I think that is the key problem here. Look, I'm someone who, from my days in the UK, has always had a kind of no platforming of fascism.

23:34You know, I won't debate fascists. And therefore, I was pretty surprised when one of those guys was like, yeah, I'm a fascist. I support General Franco. I want autocracy in the US. And I'm like, OK, well, I don't debate fascists. This is kind of going to go nowhere. And this was a very strange experience for me because I love debating. I love arguing. I wrote a damn book about the thing. I went there to do this debate. But yeah, I was a little bit stunned. It takes a lot to shut me up, as you know, John. and I was kind of speechless for a few moments there. But look, the Overton window has been shifting for a long time.

24:00Let's just take one of the core claims that they made, get out, like multiple. I think about five of them told me, you got to go, you're not an American, you got to leave. Think about where we started. It was, oh, this is all about illegal immigration. Trump is coming in to crack down on illegal immigration. Then we got into legal immigration. They detained Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder earlier this year. Permanent resident, legal immigrant. Now it's naturalized Americans. They've set up a unit, John, at the Department of Justice called the denaturalisation unit. They are going to focus on stripping citizenship from American citizens who've been naturalised.