Move comes as US lawmakers reviewing unredacted files raised concerns that some names were removed from the public records.
Ghislaine Maxwell, the associate and former girlfriend of the late Jeffrey Epstein, has refused to answer questions before a United States House of Representatives committee, but indicated that she may testify in exchange for clemency.
Maxwell, who was found guilty in 2021 for her role in helping Epstein sexually abuse teenage girls, invoked her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, lawmakers from the House Oversight Committee said on Monday.
“This is obviously very disappointing,” the committee’s chairman, Republican Representative James Comer, told reporters.
“We had many questions to ask about the crimes she and Epstein committed, as well as questions about potential co-conspirators,”
Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking at a federal camp in Texas, was subpoenaed to appear before the committee to discuss her relations with Epstein, but her lawyers said she would only testify if President Donald Trump granted her clemency.
A video of the closed-door deposition showed Maxwell – dressed in a brown, prison-issued shirt and sitting at a conference table with a bottle of water – repeatedly saying she was invoking “my Fifth Amendment right to silence”.
Maxwell’s lawyer, David Oscar Markus, said in a statement to the committee that “Maxwell is prepared to speak fully and honestly if granted clemency by President Trump”.
He added that both Trump and former President Bill Clinton “are innocent of any wrongdoing”, but that “Ms Maxwell alone can explain why, and the public is entitled to that explanation”.
The deposition came as the Department of Justice released millions of internal documents related to Epstein. The files show that both Trump and Clinton spent time with the sex offender in the 1990s and early 2000s, but they have not been credibly accused of wrongdoing.
Clinton and his wife, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are both set to sit for depositions later this month.
Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher, reporting from Washington, DC, said that “people were waiting to hear answers to important questions” during the deposition, “but we got nothing”.
“What she did say, very briefly, was that she never saw any evidence of Trump or Clinton involved in anything that was illegal,” Fisher said. “Many people suggest that was a deliberate ploy on her part to say, ‘Look, you buy my silence, but I want clemency.’ She’s appealing to both parties here to say, ‘I will clear the people that you care most about’.”
Asked about Maxwell’s appeal, the White House on Monday pointed to previous remarks from the president that indicated the prospect of a pardon was not on his radar.
Democratic Representative Ro Khanna, meanwhile, expressed frustration with Maxwell’s refusal to testify, noting that she had previously spoken with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who had worked as Trump’s personal lawyer.
“This position appears inconsistent with Ms Maxwell’s prior conduct, as she did not invoke the Fifth Amendment when she previously met with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to discuss substantially similar subject matter,” Khanna said.
Maxwell was moved to a minimum-security prison in Texas after meeting twice with Blanche last year. The deputy attorney general cited “numerous threats against her life”, without providing details.
The move prompted questions from Democratic lawmakers, who asked whether Maxwell had “been given special treatment in exchange for political favours” as Trump’s own relationship with Epstein comes under growing scrutiny.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing, calling the Epstein scandal a “hoax”, and saying he broke off ties in the early 2000s, before Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to a prostitution charge.
Maxwell is the only person convicted of crimes related to Epstein, whose connections to powerful individuals worldwide have been revealed in the Epstein files.
The release of the documents has set in motion political crises in multiple countries, including in the United Kingdom, where Prime Minister Keir Starmer is clinging to his job after it was revealed that his former ambassador to the US had maintained close ties with Epstein.
Democratic lawmakers, however, bemoaned that political figures in the US seem to be escaping unscathed so far.
“I’m just afraid that the general worsening and degradation of American life has somehow conditioned people not to take this as seriously as we should be taking it,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland.
Separately, on Monday, several Democratic and Republican lawmakers also visited a Justice Department office in Washington, DC, to look through the unredacted versions of the Epstein files. The lawmakers were given access to the more than 3 million released files in a reading room with four computers, as part of an arrangement with the Justice Department.
The lawmakers can only make handwritten notes, and their staff are not allowed in with them.
In a news conference after their visit, Khanna and Republican Representative Thomas Massie, who sponsored the legislation to force the release of the files, expressed concern that some names had been removed from the records that have been made public.
The law allows redactions to protect the identities of victims, but says no records could be withheld “on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary”.
Massie told reporters that he has identified six individuals who are “likely incriminated by their inclusion in these files”, but whose names were redacted.
Khanna said that “there’s no explanation” why the names of those people were withheld.
The two lawmakers declined to name the six individuals, but Massie said one was “pretty high up” in a foreign government, and Khanna noted that another is a “prominent individual”.
Massie also called on the Justice Department to pursue accountability for the men, but said he could potentially name them in a House floor speech, where his actions would be constitutionally protected from lawsuits.
In a subsequent social media post, Massie shared an image of a redacted document relating to a “co-conspirator”, stating that the person was a “well known retired CEO” and that the redaction should be removed.
The Justice Department has previously said no new prosecutions are expected over the Epstein case.
Trump fought for months to prevent the release of the vast trove of documents about Epstein, but a rebellion among Republicans forced him to sign off on the law mandating that all the records be released.
The move reflected intense political pressure to address what many Americans, including Trump’s supporters, have long suspected to be a cover-up to protect rich and powerful men in Epstein’s orbit.