President Donald Trump has every intention of pardoning sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, according to his former biographer.
Author Michael Wolff told the Daily Beast podcast Inside Trump’s Head that the president identifies with Maxwell, his longtime associate and the convicted co-conspirator of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, because they ran in the same well-connected circles.
“He has a feeling for these people, and he may identify with them because he’s kind of — not kind of — he is a rich criminal," Wolff noted.
Trump was convicted last year by a jury on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to shield his hush-money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election, and Wolff said the president and Maxwell are part of the "same world."
“So there is this sympathy, there is this, you know, ‘This person who knows this person who does this, and this is where the money moves, and all that,’" Wolff said. "That’s Donald Trump’s world, and it’s no coincidence that Ghislaine has known Donald Trump for many, many, many years.”
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who was Trump's defense attorney during the hush money trial, interviewed Maxwell last month in prison, and she was moved days later to a minimum-security facility after she did not implicate the president in any illegal activity.
“He knows it is actually not the politic thing to do, but, at the same time, I think he wants to pardon her,” Wolff told host Joanna Coles. “I think he feels something for her, and in addition to owing her something because she delivered on what she had to do.”
Wolff told the podcast that Trump "pardons rich criminals" like himself, and he expects the president to reduce Maxwell's 20-year sentence in some fashion.
“I think it is politically fraught for [Trump] to do this, but I think he will do this because he wants to do it, because he owes her and because he feels some sympathy for her,” Wolff said.
White House communications director Steven Cheung disputed Wolff's claims in characteristically burlesque fashion.
“Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s--- and has been proven to be a fraud,” Cheung told the Daily Beast in a statement. “He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”