Staff for the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees on Tuesday visited the Texas federal prison facility where Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, is being held, according to the panel’s top Democrats.
In a statement, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Robert Garcia of California — the ranking members on Judiciary and Oversight, respectively — said staff traveled there as part of the panel’s ongoing Epstein investigation in search of “answers about Ms. Maxwell’s unprecedented transfer and VIP treatment.”
Republican and Democratic staff from both committees attended a three-hour visit to the Texas facility, which included a two-hour tour and a back-and-forth with the facility staff, including the warden, according to a person familiar with the trip who requested anonymity to describe the private visit.
The warden argued that Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for her part in Epstein’s sex trafficking scheme, was not necessarily given special treatment, according to that person; rather, because of her prominence, measures were required because she had to remain inside for 30 days.
The lawmakers added that they received little in the way of new details, though, and doubted the truthfulness of the information that they did receive.
“Bureau of Prisons leadership repeatedly shut down our lines of questioning or could not provide basic information about our central concerns, including Ms. Maxwell’s extraordinary treatment, allegations of sexual assault at the facility, and retaliation against inmates who tried to blow the whistle,” Raskin and Garcia said in a statement released Tuesday evening.
Maxwell was moved from a prison in Florida to the minimum security prison camp in Texas after meeting with then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to discuss the Epstein case. During that interview, Maxwell claimed she never saw President Donald Trump in any inappropriate setting with Epstein, the late convicted sex offender.
Democrats have questioned whether her transfer to a cushier facility was part of a quid pro quo with the Trump administration facilitated by Blanche, who is now the acting attorney general and Trump’s nominee to run the Department of Justice. Although the president has said he broke off contact with Epstein years before his death behind bars in 2019, his onetime relationship with the financier has drawn scrutiny.
Raskin said last October he wanted his staff to conduct oversight of the Texas detention center. In November, Judiciary Democrats announced they had received information from a whistleblower that suggested Maxwell was receiving preferential treatment there.
In their statement Tuesday, Raskin and Garcia vowed they would continue to investigate Blanche’s “role in ensuring Ms. Maxwell remains comfortable and quiet.”
Read the full article here