Maxwell tells Trump: Free me and I’ll tell all to Congress

 Ghislaine Maxwell has said she will testify freely to Congress if Donald Trump frees her from jail.

Lawyers for Maxwell, 63, agreed that she would appear before the House Oversight Committee, as long as she could see what questions they planned to ask her about her links to the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, in advance.

She also asked that she receive legal immunity for any future convictions.

Her lawyer requested that Maxwell’s questioning take place after the Supreme Court rules on her appeal for her 2021 sex trafficking conviction.

Alternatively, her lawyer said, she would speak “freely and openly” to Congress right now if the president grants her clemency.

Maxwell was last week subpoenaed to answer questions before Congress about her late boyfriend, for whom she was convicted of sex trafficking underage girls, meaning she would have been forced to appear in the coming months, anyway.

“Our initial reaction was that Ms Maxwell would invoke her Fifth Amendment rights and decline to testify at this time,” David Oscar Markus, her lawyer, said in a letter to James Comer, the committee’s Republican chairman ,which was shared with The Telegraph.

He added: “After further reflection, we would like to find a way to cooperate with Congress if a fair and safe path forward can be established.”

Mr Markus wrote that his client “cannot risk further criminal exposure in a politically charged environment without formal immunity”.

He said that to “prepare adequately for any congressional deposition – and to ensure accuracy and fairness – we would require the committee’s questions in advance”.

His letter continues: “In the alternative, if Ms Maxwell were to receive clemency, she would be willing – and eager – to testify openly and honestly, in public, before Congress in Washington, DC. She welcomes the opportunity to share the truth and to dispel the many misconceptions and misstatements that have plagued this case from the beginning.”

Earlier this week, Mr Markus wrote to the Supreme Court urging it to look at Maxwell’s 2021 conviction on sex trafficking charges, arguing that a non-prosecution agreement with Epstein dating from 2008 prevented her subsequent prosecution.

“Plea and non-prosecution agreements resolve nearly every federal case. They routinely include promises that extend to others – co-conspirators, family members, potential witnesses,” he wrote to the court.

“If those promises mean different things in different parts of the country, then trust in our system collapses.”

The case of Epstein, who was found dead in his New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, has continued to reverberate after his death.

It has presented a challenge for Mr Trump, who was elected to a second term with a promise to release any outstanding evidence from the case. Many of his supporters believed senior Democrats and other powerful people would be revealed to be at the heart of a child sex trafficking ring.

When the Department of Justice announced earlier this month there was no client list and the FBI was recommending there be no further release of material, there was outcry among some.

While the president was one of Epstein’s many high-profile associates, who also included former president Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew, Mr Trump has said he broke off contact with him 20 years ago.

When the Wall Street Journal published what it said was a “bawdy” note from Mr Trump to Epstein for his 50th birthday, he denied having done so and said he was suing the paper and its owner Rupert Murdoch.

Last week, Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general who was previously Mr Trump’s private lawyer, interviewed Maxwell for more than nine hours.

Amid reports that the daughter of newspaper baron Sir Robert Maxwell, was seeking a pardon, some of Epstein’s victims said it would be an act of betrayal to give one.

Asked about a potential pardon, Mr Trump told reporters in Scotland over the weekend: “Well, I’m allowed to give her a pardon, but I – nobody’s approached me with it.”

He added: “Nobody’s asked me about it. It’s in the news about that, that aspect of it, but right now, it would be inappropriate to talk about it.”