Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime girlfriend and accomplice of convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, will sit for a congressional deposition next month.
The announcement came as a judge on Wednesday separately rejected an effort by House lawmakers to have a court appoint a special master to oversee the Trump administration’s ongoing release of the documents in the Epstein files.
House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer announced at a hearing that Maxwell would comply with a subpoena from the committee, which has been leading the investigation into the federal government’s handling of the investigations into Epstein. She’ll appear virtually, and her attorneys have said previously that Maxwell will plead the Fifth to avoid the lawmakers’ questions.
House lawmakers can’t compel Maxwell to drop her Fifth Amendment protections and Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence, is seeking a clemency deal from the Trump administration. Congress can’t grant her that pardon, and the Oversight committee has ruled out granting her immunity for her testimony. The president has not answered whether he would pardon Maxwell if it reached his desk, but has refused to rule it out.
Epstein died in a Manhattan detention facility in 2019. He was convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution in a “sweetheart” plea deal in 2008, and was under a second criminal investigation for sex trafficking of minors when he died in federal custody.
Throughout 2025, the Trump administration found itself embroiled in scandal over the investigation into Epstein, prompting the congressional probe to be launched.
Senior White House figures such as JD Vance and political appointees at the Department of Justice and FBI were publicly supportive of releasing the entirety of the government’s accumulated evidence and other collected information concerning the billionaire pedophile who was accused of running a ring of underage sex trafficking all while cultivating a powerful network of friends and business partners through his various activities.
But over the course of the summer, the government clammed up. An initial event was held at the White House to distribute “phase one” of the release of the Epstein files to a group of conservative influencers; phase two never materialized, and Attorney General Pam Bondi declared in a joint statement with the FBI that further releases would not be forthcoming.
The resulting surge of accusations of a cover-up quickly spread online and across both traditional and new media. Polling strongly suggested that a wide majority of Americans believed in July of 2025 that the Trump administration was now involved in covering up evidence in the case that could incriminate powerful Americans.
Members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans, joined together and passed legislation forcing the government to release the files by December 19. The legislation passed despite Donald Trump and the White House directly lobbying against its passage, and insulting Republicans who insisted that the investigation was worth pursuing. He has also repeatedly insisted that only Democrats will be exposed by the files, despite his own long relationship with the billionaire.
Trump has not been accused of wrongdoing and said he kicked Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club.
A drip-drip of files and photos soon began coming out of Congress, released in batches by the Oversight panel’s lawmakers. Media attention also heavily focused on the case and The Wall Street Journal obtained an eye-opening note allegedly penned by the president to Epstein before his 2008 conviction wishing the pedophile a happy birthday and alluding to a “secret” that the two men supposedly shared; the note was penned inside the sketched outline of a naked woman.
Trump has denied ever writing Epstein the note, and denies that a signature on the image later obtained by the Oversight committee is his. He has not been accused of criminal wrongdoing in the case, and has furiously denied knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.
The president contended, however, in a stunning admission to reporters on Air Force One last year that the reason for the dissolution of his friendship with Epstein was the financier’s successful efforts to hire one of his eventual victims, Virginia Giuffre, away from her previous employment at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
While some of the files have been released by the DOJ, the December 19 deadline has passed without full disclosure. The administrator says it is reviewing the files ahead of future releases, a move that prompted the push to have a special master appointed to oversee the release of the files.
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