US Justice Department releases Ghislaine Maxwell interview transcript

The US Justice Department has released a transcript of an interview with Ghislaine Maxwell - the jailed ex-girlfriend of paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Maxwell said in the interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche last month that she never saw US President Donald Trump in an "inappropriate setting".

According to the transcript, Maxwell said: "I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way.

"The president was never inappropriate with anybody."

Maxwell also recalled knowing about Mr Trump and possibly meeting him for the first time in 1990, when her newspaper magnate father, Robert Maxwell, was the owner of the New York Daily News.

"I may have met Donald Trump at that time, because my father was friendly with him and liked him very much," Maxwell said, according to the transcript.

Maxwell said her father was fond of Trump's then-wife, Ivana, "because she was also from Czechoslovakia, where my dad was from."

She was sentenced in the US in June 2022 to 20 years in prison following her conviction on five counts of sex trafficking.

The release of the transcript comes after Mr Trump has faced criticism from Republican supporters and Democrats over his Justice Department's decision not to release further details relating to Epstein, after the now US president promised to do so during the election.

Epstein died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

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