The US Senate unanimously agreed on July 29 that Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex trafficker and longtime associate of the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, should not receive a presidential pardon or any other form of executive clemency.


The non-binding resolution was introduced by Senator Jacky Rosen, a Democrat from Nevada, to express the Senate's opposition to granting Maxwell "a pardon, commutation, or any other form of executive clemency," Caliber.Az reports, citing The New York Post.


Although the measure does not carry legal force, it sends a bipartisan message to the Trump administration that both Republican and Democratic senators oppose clemency for Maxwell, 64, who is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence after her 2021 conviction on charges including conspiracy to commit sex trafficking and trafficking of a minor.


Rosen sought unanimous consent for the resolution during remarks on the Senate floor, and no senator objected.


"It's frankly horrifying that Trump would entertain the idea of clemency for even a second for a convicted sex trafficker," Rosen said.


She added: "If Republicans advance Todd Blanche's nomination tomorrow in the Judiciary Committee, this is the least they can do to make their opposition to a Maxwell pardon clear."


Earlier on Wednesday, a Senate vote to confirm Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche as President Donald Trump's nominee to succeed former Attorney General Pam Bondi was delayed after opposition from two Republican senators.


Blanche, who oversaw the release of the Epstein files while serving as deputy attorney general, has previously made it clear that he would not recommend a pardon for Maxwell.


The White House has repeatedly denied that clemency for Maxwell is under consideration. Trump, however, has previously declined to rule out the possibility when questioned by reporters.


“I haven’t even thought about [it]. I haven’t thought about it for months. Maybe I haven’t thought about it all,” the president said in November. “But I don’t talk about that. I don’t rule it in or out.”


A month earlier, he told reporters: "I will speak to the DOJ. I wouldn’t consider it or not consider — I don’t know anything about it."


In October, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Maxwell's appeal of her sex trafficking conviction.


Maxwell appeared virtually before the House Oversight Committee from a minimum-security federal prison camp in Texas in February, after being transferred there following an interview with Blanche last summer. During the deposition, she invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.


Her attorney, David Oscar Markus, later said Maxwell was prepared to testify that both President Donald Trump and former President Bill Clinton were "innocent of any wrongdoing," despite their past associations with Epstein during the 1990s and 2000s.




By Bakhtiyar Abbasov