​Trump 'buying' Maxwell's silence to protect 'Epstein island afterparty' admin: lawmaker

Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) accused President Donald Trump on Sunday of openly trying to “buy” the silence of a key witness in Congress’ investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, and all to protect his “Epstein island afterparty” administration.

Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s co-conspirator who’s currently serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking, is slated to appear before the House Oversight Committee on Monday, but her lawyers have made clear that she plans to remain silent.

Maxwell’s vow to remain silent, Stansbury argued, was a thinly veiled appeal to Trump for leniency on her sentence, and one that Trump’s past comments and actions suggest could succeed.

“I think it's very clear that she is seeking either commutation or a pardon of her sentence,” Stansbury told MS NOW’s “The Weekend” on Sunday.

“That's based on not only what she's done in the courts, but Trump made an off-handed comment yet again about giving her a pardon, and I think between the highly unusual transfer of her to Club Fed and him talking openly about pardoning her, it appears that he's buying her silence.”

The Trump administration continues to be rocked by the ongoing Congressional investigations into Epstein and his potential co-conspirators, as well as by the release of millions of Epstein files, which the Justice Department was to do after the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Among the newly released Epstein files are emails and documents that shed fresh light on the ties many top Trump administration officials had to Epstein, a point Stansbury couldn’t help but also point out.

“Donald Trump is the number-one named individual, there's over three dozen of his associates [named in the files], including his wife [and] Howard Lutnick, [who] was apparently in business with Jeffrey Epstein,” Stansbury said.