Trump may plan other 'outrageous' pardons to bury Ghislaine Maxwell news: MSNBC host

President Donald Trump may already have a plan to pardon disgraced British socialite and convicted Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell argued this week — and try to distract people from it in the process.

Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for her role in grooming, and sometimes sexually assaulting, the young girls Epstein trafficked at his "parties."

O'Donnell made his prediction of how it would go down on "The Last Word" Monday evening, flagged by The Daily Beast.

"There will be a flood of pardons issued on Donald Trump's last day in office, that's for sure," O'Donnell said. “Most of them will be undeserving. Many of them will be flagrantly scandalous, and some of the most outrageous pardons on that day may be chosen just to take some of the outrage away from a pardon of Ghislaine Maxwell, the pardon she may have earned already in her conversation with Donald Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer, Todd Blanche.”

Such a pardon blitz would mirror a similar one Trump made when he first exited office in 2020, which included a number of his close associates like Steve Bannon, who was facing fraud charges for a privately funded scheme to build a border wall. Trump biographer Michael Wolff has alleged Trump was actually already considering a pardon for Maxwell during those final days, fearful she would reveal embarrassing details about his own relationship with Epstein at trial.

As outrage has grown among Trump's own base about the lack of promised transparency over the Epstein case files, Trump dispatched Blanche, now deputy attorney general, to interview Maxwell at her prison in Florida.

Shortly after this, amid a great deal of controversy, Maxwell was moved to a minimum security "Club Fed" facility in Bryan, Texas, where she is allowed amenities like increased freedom of movement. Federal Bureau of Prison Rules actually had to be changed on the fly to allow this, as such transfers are generally not allowed for high-level sex offenders.