“She might be a victim”: Why Trump Will Pardon Ghislaine Maxwell
Trump has ended the separation between his personal defense and the legal machinery of the state
With a very high degree of probability, Donald Trump is going to pardon or commute the sentence of Ghislaine Maxwell in the next month or two. Here’s why.
In the case of Maxwell, what Trump has already done is institutionally catastrophic to the Department of Justice. To start, by hiring his personal criminal defense lawyer Todd Blanche to become Deputy AG overseeing all prosecutions and pardons, Trump destroyed any semblance of objectivity at DOJ and signaled that it was going to become his personal law firm.
But by assigning Blanche to go on a two-day interview with a convicted child sex trafficker sitting in prison—who in all likelihood has deeply damaging information about Trump and wants a pardon—Trump has ended the separation between his personal defense and the legal machinery of the state. It’s not corruption, it is disintegration of everything we were told for years was so important by Democrats—norms, institutions and the rule of law.
This is what a decompensating government looks like, a shameless, paranoid, grandiose spectacle with no boundaries, governed by projection and magical thinking.
This morning, on Trump’s way to yet another golf course vacation, this exchange arose:
Reporter: “Would you consider a pardon or commutation for Ghislaine Maxwell?”
Trump: “I’m allowed to do it, but it’s something I haven’t thought about.”
Let’s examine what Trump’s doing here. This is his usual rhetorical pattern when trying to do something transgressive:
Step 1: Float the possibility
Step 2: Deny intention
Step 3: Let allies test narratives
Step 4: Act when resistance is lowest and leverage is highest.
What are some other examples of this?
In March 2020, two months before Bill Barr dropped the charges on Mike Flynn, and seven months before pardoning Flynn, Trump tweeted this:
“General Flynn was tormented. He’s a good man. Let’s see what happens.”
Trump knew what he was going to do ahead of time, floated the possibility, let his proxies normalize it, and then pulled the trigger when he needed Flynn for his own purposes.
Similarly, Trump said this in February 2020, four months before commuting Roger Stone’s sentence, and eight months before he pardoned Stone.
“I think Roger Stone has been treated very unfairly.”
Similar dynamics can be seen with many of Trump’s pardons, and other similarly corrupt actions, including the pardon and commutation en masse of 1,600 J6 criminals and terrorists.
After a few hours in the air to his golf course, Trump was asked in Scotland about Ghislaine Maxwell, again:
“I really have no really nothing to say about it. She is being talked to by a very smart man, by a very good man, Todd Blanche. And I don't know anything about the conversation. I haven't really been following it. A lot of people are asking me about pardons. Obviously, this is no time to be talking about pardons. But a lot of people have asked about pardons. This is just not a time to be talking about pardons. Todd will come back with whatever he's got. You're making a very big thing over something that's not a big thing. You should be talking about, if you're going to talk about that, talk about Clinton, talk about the former president of Harvard, talk about all of his friends, talk about the hedge fund guys that were with them all the time. Don't talk about Trump. What you should be talking about is the fact that we have the greatest six months in the history of a presidency, according to a lot of people.”
Trump is essentially saying right out loud that “this is not the time to be thinking about pardons” because he hasn’t had time to normalize it with his proxies. He needs others to give him the rationalization to do it.
Lo and behold, Greg Kelly from Newsmax, a friend of Trump who is known to float narratives on Trump’s behalf, said this last night about Maxwell:
“And she's also been subpoenaed by the oversight committee. I think this is great. I do have a feeling that she has been, she just might be a victim, she just might be. There was a rush to judgment. There was a lot of chaos there for a while. All right, granted she hung out with Jeffrey Epstein. And I know that's apparently not good. But she's in jail.”
The idea that Ghislaine Maxwell, a psychopathic sexual sadist with narcissistic personality disorder who abused, groomed or otherwise trafficked over a thousand girls and women, is a victim, is simply demented.
Here is what a few of her victims said about her, for the record:
Virginia Giuffre
“Maxwell was like the ‘madam’ of the house. She was like the enforcer. She would always be the one to call me and say, ‘Jeffrey wants you. Get on the plane.’”
“She was cold. She knew what she was doing. She said it was normal. That sex with older men was how powerful women got ahead.”
Annie Farmer
“She had this fake British charm, but she was manipulative and cruel underneath. She used that charm to disarm you. And once she had control, she used it to abuse.”
“She touched my chest. She told me I needed to be more comfortable with my body. It felt so violating.”
Sarah Ransome
“She is a monster. She told me how to please Epstein. She would laugh when I cried.”
“She’s worse than him in many ways—because she’s a woman and she knew exactly what she was doing.”
Here is what a judge said about her:
“[Maxwell] was instrumental in the horrific abuse of minor girls, and she made it possible for Epstein to commit these crimes by choosing, grooming, and controlling the victims.” —Judge Alison Nathan
For a full, comprehensive timeline of the connections between Trump, Maxwell and Epstein by someone who knows this subject extremely well, this article by
is highly recommended.
Here is a data-driven network approach to understanding these connections by my friend
that yields results that make a lot of sense in this context. You don’t need have a massive conspiracy behind Epstein to understand why this is such a threat to Donald Trump’s regime—and, just as importantly, a catastrophic wound to his ego.
In a decompensating narcissist, whose very essence, his self-image in the eyes of his victims, is under threat, loyalty tests are common. For example, this will be a very challenging loyalty test by Trump:
“Defend Ghislaine Maxwell. Treat her like a victim so I have an excuse to pardon her and shut her up.”
The fact that Greg Kelly already chose to pass this test is a remarkable statement about the power of undue influence and corruption. If you start to see more of Trump’s proxies play the victim card for deviant sexual predator Ghislaine Maxwell, you’ll know the fix is in and it’s just a matter of when.
Whether you choose to look at this psychologically, historically, or from a data-driven perspective, the results are the same. Donald Trump is a wounded, rabid animal desperate to find his way out of a corner of his own making. There is no reason to believe he won’t try to extricate himself by simply declaring himself innocent by proxy.
“I could tell them Ghislaine was a victim and they would believe it” is the new “I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters.”
This sickest part is that he’s right.
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This makes me sick to my stomach. 🤢
I think that when Trump frees Maxwell it will make him look worse. I also think that this isn’t going away when Congress comes back in September.
Sick and demented. The whole lot and scenario. Here the thing, they have been cultivating the religious crowd. They are one and same. Evangelical or their special brand of national Christianity? I can’t name it. Southpark got it right. Along with the flowing champagne, they hate the sin but love the sinner. There is no logic here. It will take decades if ever to rebuild.