The family of Virginia Giuffre, one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, has urged Donald Trump not to pardon the disgraced financier’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
As backlash grows over his administration’s handling of the Epstein case, Trump told reporters on Monday that he is “allowed” to grant clemency to Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking minors, adding that he hadn’t thought about it.
The family of Giuffre, a key survivor of Epstein’s sexual abuse who died by suicide in April, said any leniency shown toward Maxwell would be “one of the highest travesties of justice”.
“The government and the President should never consider giving Ghislaine Maxwell any leniency,” the family said in a statement Wednesday.
“Ghislaine Maxwell is a monster who deserves to rot in prison for the rest of her life for the extraordinary violence and abuse she put not just our sister Virginia through, but many other survivors, who may number in the thousands.”
A senior administration official told NBC News that no leniency towards Maxwell is being discussed. The family also noted that Trump said “clemency for Maxwell is not something he is even thinking about at this time”.
The Giuffres pounced on Trump’s claims on Tuesday that Epstein “stole” the victim from his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach. Aged 16, Giuffre had worked at Trump’s resort as a locker-room attendant during the summer of 2000.
“It was shocking to hear President Trump invoke our sister and say that he was aware that Virginia had been ‘stolen’ from Mar-a-Lago,” they said in the statement.
“It makes us ask if he was aware of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal actions, especially given his statement two years later that his good friend Jeffrey ‘likes women on the younger side… no doubt about it’.”
Trump denies having any knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activity, and the president has never been accused of wrongdoing in connection with the disgraced financier’s case.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday evening that the president kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago for “being a creep” to female staff.
In the statement, the family acknowledged that Giuffre had worked at Trump’s Florida resort years before Epstein and Trump allegedly fell out over a real estate deal around 2004, and a year before police began investigating Epstein.
However, the family accused Maxwell of having “preyed upon” Giuffre while she worked at the resort 25 years ago.
Giuffre’s family told The Atlantic on Wednesday that the Epstein victim’s work at Mar-a-Lago was meant to be a fun summertime job, but instead led to her being sex trafficked.
For more than a decade, the Epstein case has been a subject of intense public interest, amid speculation that high-profile public figures who had ties to the financier may have been involved in – or had knowledge of – his sex-trafficking network.
The Trump administration has been facing backlash after the Justice Department and FBI said in a memo released earlier this month that there was no client list of Epstein’s associates who may have participated in his crimes. It also noted that Epstein did indeed die by suicide in his jail cell in 2019.
Giuffre’s family noted in its statement that they and the public are demanding answers about the case and that “survivors deserve this”.
In what Democrats are calling a veiled effort to drown out the outrage at the Trump administration’s sudden U-turn on the files, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche met with Maxwell privately for nine hours last week.
Last week, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee subpoenaed Maxwell, leading her to signal that she would testify to Congress if granted immunity.
Giuffre’s family warned Maxwell had already been convicted for lying under oath and said she “will continue to do so for as long as it affects her position”.
The committee quickly rejected Maxwell’s proposal, stating through a spokesperson that immunity will not even be considered.
