[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 134 (Saturday, August 2, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Page S5502]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            Jeffrey Epstein

  Mr. President, what I wanted to discuss here with Senator Schiff 
was--Senator Schiff was an assistant U.S. attorney, which is one of the 
prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office. I was a U.S. attorney. U.S. 
attorneys have a higher but slightly more ceremonial role, I think 
assistant U.S. attorneys would be swift to confess, and AUSAs do a lot 
of the direct work.
  One thing that Senator Schiff and I both noticed with respect to this 
Epstein saga has been that the Deputy Attorney General of the United 
States went out and did a direct witness interview with Epstein's 
coconspirator and Trump's friend Ghislaine Maxwell.
  If you don't know the backdrop to this and how things ordinarily work 
in the Department of Justice, it is hard to fathom how very weird that 
was, so we would like to take a minute and describe, from our 
perspective, how it is that, in regular Department business, the 
engagement with witnesses takes place.
  I will turn it over to the former assistant U.S. attorney to give his 
description of how and when a prosecutor would go into a room with a 
witness. But as I do that, let me just say that the Deputy Attorney 
General of the United States virtually never ever, ever, ever, ever, 
does. For somebody at that level to be involved is truly bizarre.
  With that, let me give Senator Schiff a chance to engage in his part 
of the colloquy here.
  Mr. SCHIFF. Senator, thank you.
  There are lots of extraordinary and suspicious happenings around the 
Epstein case in the last few months. But just by way of background to 
those who may not be following each development, you have Epstein at 
one point describing himself as one of Donald Trump's closest friends. 
You have Donald Trump saying at one point that he shares a bond with 
Epstein over their mutual like of attractive women and pointing out 
that, in the case of Epstein, they tend to be on the younger side. You 
have the President recently acknowledging he is upset with Jeffrey 
Epstein for stealing young women from Mar-a-Lago--by Epstein--for 
purposes that he did not disclose--the President did not disclose.
  Tragically, in April, one of those women--one of those children, 
underage women--working at Mar-a-Lago committed suicide. She was a 
victim of the Ghislaine Maxwell-Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking. Just 
this past April, she took her own life. But she was one of those women, 
apparently, that Trump was upset that Epstein was taking away from him 
at Mar-a-Lago. It certainly begs the question of, what did Trump think 
Jeffrey Epstein was doing with these young women he was taking from 
Mar-a-Lago?
  So these are just some of the questions we hope will be answered, 
but, of course, after promising the MAGA base that he would disclose 
these files, after Bondi promised and Kash Patel promised and Trump 
promised, they have reneged on this.
  So this is the backdrop in which Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche 
goes to visit the No. 1 coconspirator, Maxwell.
  The other background piece of this is that Todd Blanche isn't just 
some Deputy Attorney General; Todd Blanche is Trump's former criminal 
defense lawyer. Todd Blanche is the guy who sat in the courtroom in 
Manhattan helping to defend Donald Trump against the Stormy Daniels 
allegations against him, for which Donald Trump was convicted of 
multiple felonies.
  As you will remember from the Judiciary Committee when Blanche came 
for his confirmation hearing, you and I were both concerned about 
whether Blanche would be able to shed his role as Trump's criminal 
defense lawyer when he adopted the new role of being the No. 2 person 
in the Justice Department.
  All of this begs the question of, when this very unusual thing 
happened where the No. 2 person at the Justice Department goes to talk 
to the coconspirator, this child sex predator, is he acting as Trump's 
defense lawyer or is he acting as a Deputy AG?
  As you were alluding to, if this wasn't bizarre enough, for a top 
person like that to go interview a witness is unprecedented. For them 
to do it secretly--and we don't know if this was recorded; we don't 
know if an FBI agent was present. It would be unthinkable to do this in 
the absence of an FBI agent taking down the statement, but there is no 
evidence that took place.
  The only thing we do know is that this interview lasted 9 hours, and 
after the interview, Ghislaine Maxwell got the special treatment of 
being moved from her prison in Florida to a minimum security prison in 
Texas that is like a camp, to which sex predators are not supposed to 
be sent. So why did she get that special treatment?
  Finally, one other point I would make before I yield back to you 
about how unusual all this is, is the defense attorney representing 
Maxwell is friends, apparently, with Todd Blanche, the Deputy Attorney 
General, and when Maxwell was asked ``Are you hoping for a pardon out 
of this? he basically said ``We didn't ask for one, but of course the 
President has said he has the power to do it.'' They obviously want 
some special treatment. They are already getting it. But we have no 
record of any of this.
  So, yes, this is so unusual, extraordinary, and unprecedented. And if 
they think this is going to somehow answer the questions that have been 
raised by their refusal to turn over these documents, it is the 
furthest thing from that, wouldn't you say?
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I see that the Senator from Maryland has come to the 
floor to make his unanimous consent request, so let me yield to him 
since we are kind of into his time here.
  But what Senator Schiff and I can both tell all of you is that it is 
extremely rare for even a U.S. attorney to go and do a witness 
statement and unusual in most circumstances even for an assistant U.S. 
attorney to go and do a witness statement. The reason for that is you 
then become a witness to what took place in that room, and you don't 
want to be both the prosecutor and the witness in the same case.
  So the fact that he went in either alone or with no FBI agent or with 
no stenographer and became a witness to what took place sends off 
flares of concern to everybody who has served in that line of work.
  With that, I yield.
  Mr. SCHIFF. Can I make one last point, with your indulgence?
  One other extraordinary fact about this is that none of the 
prosecutors who actually worked on prosecuting Maxwell were present. 
The reason you would want them there is, they know the facts. Blanche 
doesn't know the facts. So when you are interrogating this person, when 
you are taking their statement, you want somebody who knows the facts, 
who can attest to whether they are being forthcoming, telling the truth 
or not.
  Also, a defense lawyer representing 20 of the Epstein victims asked 
to be present, and they were turned down.
  This just stinks to high heaven.
  I yield to my colleague from Maryland.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.