During a segment on the transcripts the Department of Justice released of Todd Blanche's interviews with Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex trafficker and partner of Jeffrey Epstein, MSNBC's Jonathan Capehart had his producers put up a screenshot of a remark the high-ranking DOJ official made that drew his scrutiny.
“There's something unusual that happened during this meeting, just one unusual, not just one. But it's unusual for when this thing happened and it's at the very beginning of their meeting,” Capehart noted to his guest, former Florida prosecutor Dave Aronberg.
With the screenshot appearing and audio playing, Blanche is heard telling Maxwell, “Okay, so before we started recording, we met for a few minutes. I introduced myself and we chatted, and now I told you that we were going on the record. And before we start asking questions, I know that you've been given by your lawyer a copy of what's called a proffer agreement, and I just want to spend two minutes making sure that you understand what governs. our conversation today. The most important part of this agreement is that this isn't a cooperation agreement, meaning that by you meeting with us today, we're really just meeting, I'm not promising to do anything.”
That led Capehart to exclaim to his guest, “So, Dave, I wanted to play that because I'm not an attorney. But what jumped out at me is the very first few, the very first few words he says: ‘So before we started recording, we met for a few minutes. i introduced myself and we've chatted.’ Is that, is that unusual?”
“Am I being conspiratorial in thinking why is the president's personal lawyer, who is now the number two official at DOJ, talking to someone before they start recording?” he asked. “I could understand a few seconds; ‘Hey, Dave, nice to meet you,’ hit record. But a few minutes, for a few minutes?”
“It might have been just small talk or could have been something more, but it doesn't matter,” Aronberg replied. “I mean, really, she got sent to a minimum security prison, Club Fed, right? There's a pardon being dangled. So if you want conspiracy theories, they got a lot of ammunition for it.”
“The fact that they talked in advance beforehand, yeah, I mean, sure” he added. “But remember he [Blanche] said in here that we're not doing this for purposes of an investigation, we just want to hear from you. So the cat's already out of the bag. This was done to try to help Donald Trump but it's not going to satisfy the base. All this stuff is really nonsense when the base wants the Epsteinfiles, this doesn't move the needle.”
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