Former aide panicked Trump is poised to set off a wave of 'outrage like never before'
President Donald Trump’s former White House press secretary Sean Spicer issued his former boss a dire warning Friday in an appearance on the podcast The Morning Meeting, cautioning the president of an unprecedented fallout should he issue a pardon to among America’s most notorious sex traffickers.
Rumors continue to circulate that Trump is weighing a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking in association with the late Jeffrey Epstein, who died in 2019 awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, and is alleged to have maintained a ‘client list’ of powerful figures for blackmail purposes.
Were Trump to ultimately issue a pardon for Maxwell, the consequences would likely be “outrage like never before,” Spicer argued.
“There will be outrage like never before if she gets a deal, this will transcend partisan lines,” Spicer said.
“I'm telling you that if that happens, the number of people that care about this issue, care about those young girls, care about justice for so many of these people that have gotten off, I hope to God nobody in the White House has led him to believe that that's the case, that that would be a smart move.”
Speculation as to a pardon has only intensified after Maxwell was quietly moved to a minimum-security prison last week, a move that required the Trump administration to waive federal prisoner rules to facilitate. Trump’s Justice Department has also met with Maxwell in an effort to, according to Trump’s attorney and DOJ deputy attorney general Todd Blanche, identify potential co-conspirators of Epstein.
Critics, however, have labeled Trump’s new fixation on Maxwell as a ploy to exonerate himself, having long maintained a close friendship with the disgraced financier across decades. One security expert, Marcy Wheeler, said she suspected Trump might dangle a plea deal in front of Maxwell in exchange for incriminating information on his political enemies such as former President Bill Clinton, also a longtime friend of Epstein’s.
Spicer, however, urged Trump to immediately rule out issuing a pardon for Maxwell, and shifted blame for any potential pardon talks to the president’s staff.
“I would say he would be under the impression that he was going to be able to say that they 'got something' from her, further information,” Spicer said.
“I think anyone who sells him on this is lying to him. I think this is very akin to (former FBI Director James) Comey; when he fired Comey, he was told 'if you fire Comey, everyone's going to cheer you on,' and I think people misled him on how that was going to go down. I think this is similar.”
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