Congress
Maxwell’s lawyer says she’s undecided on appearing for congressional testimony
A lawyer for Ghislaine Maxwell said his client is still deciding whether she will honor a congressional subpoena demanding her testimony next month before House lawmakers.
“We have to make a decision about whether she will do that or not,” said David Oscar Markus, an attorney for Maxwell, the convicted sex trafficker and co-conspirator of the deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein. “That’s been scheduled for the week of August 11th and we haven’t gotten back to them on whether we’ll do that.”
Markus delivered these remarks after Maxwell completed a two-day interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche as part of the Trump administration’s continued inquiry into the charges against Epstein’s circle.
The comments suggest Maxwell is weighing whether to assert privileges to resist the House Oversight and Governmental Reform Committee’s effort to compel her testimony. Importantly, Maxwell is still appealing her conviction on the sex trafficking conspiracy that led to a 20-year jail sentence.
If Maxwell asserts her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, there’s little Congress can do to pierce it, except offer her a rarely used form of immunity. It’s unclear if the Justice Department negotiated any sort of immunity agreement with Maxwell for her testimony this week.
But Markus said Maxwell answered every question posed by Blanche, covering about 100 different people. “She didn’t hold back,” he said.
Markus also said there’s been no discussion with the Trump administration about a possible pardon “just yet, ” adding, “We hope [President Donald Trump] exercises that power in the right and just way.”
The Justice Department has long housed deep doubts about Maxwell’s credibility — a sentiment Speaker Mike Johnson echoed this week.
“Could she be counted on to tell the truth? Is she a credible witness? I mean, this is a person who’s been sentenced to many, many years in prison for terrible, unspeakable, conspiratorial acts and acts against innocent young people,” Johnson told reporters. “I mean, can we trust what she’s going to say? … I don’t know, but we’ll have to see.”
GOP leaders so far have pointed to the Justice Department interviewing Maxwell as a positive step, with more questions lingering over the congressional push to get information from the Epstein associate.
A spokesperson for Oversight Committee Republicans had no comment Friday afternoon.
Hailey Fuchs contributed to this report.
Hours after Democratic socialist candidates swept to victory in New York primary races, Republicans celebrated those victories as a boon for their own party as it struggles against headwinds from the Iran war and cost of living issues ahead of the November midterms.
Inside a closed-door House GOP meeting Wednesday morning, the head of the Republican campaign arm said the victories of candidates backed by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani offered an opportunity for GOP House candidates to draw a sharp contrast.
Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina said “Democrats have a Bolshevik revolution going on in their primaries,” according to three people in the room granted anonymity to discuss the private event.
Speaker Mike Johnson also delivered remarks to Republicans setting the stakes of the election after the “radical” left-wing wins and urging Republicans to dig in and raise money to defeat Democrats this fall. He received a standing ovation, the people in the room said.
Hudson said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries will take the socialists’ wins as a sign he needs to navigate further to the left. There will be no cooperation with Republicans, he added.
Other Republicans publicly seized on the left-wing triumphs Wednesday, including Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio — who said “the lesson is clear: if Republicans don’t act now, we will lose this country as we know it.”
“We need to be clear about what we stand for,” he wrote on X. “Closed borders, secure elections, economic prosperity for all Americans, and, most of all, proudly protecting the American way of life against socialism.”
President Donald Trump abruptly canceled a bill signing for major bipartisan legislation on housing affordability on Wednesday, saying he wouldn’t back the law until Congress passes his elections bill.
“Today’s Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency,” Trump said in a post to Truth Social.
Trump was scheduled to sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing bill on Wednesday afternoon, which passed both chambers with wide bipartisan support.
Trump announced the cancellation as Speaker Mike Johnson and top House leaders held a news conference touting the bill.
President Donald Trump Wednesday will come face-to-face with Senate Republicans for the first time in months as the party struggles to set its priorities heading into the midterms.
After weeks of shadowboxing with each other, Trump is scheduled to visit Capitol Hill and press the conference to pass his signature election security bill that has languished for months. Senate Republicans — several of whom have openly agonized that Trump isn’t focused enough on helping their party keep its tenuous control of Congress — have their own agenda for talks.
Let’s be clear: Wednesday’s lunch isn’t going to change the fate of the GOP election bill. Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Tuesday that “people at some point have to come to grips” with the fact that there aren’t the votes to nix the filibuster or pass Trump’s No. 1 priority.
But Trump is showing no sign of being ready to accept that — and indicated he intends to make the case for doing whatever it takes during the lunch with Senate Republicans.
“We’re just going to talk about SAVE America. … We have to pass it so we’re going to have to talk about that and many other things,” Trump told reporters.
Asked about Thune saying the party lacks the votes for passage, he added: “That’s what being a leader is about. … John is a leader and hopefully he can get the votes.”
While Trump wants to focus on the SAVE America Act, GOP senators expect a wider-ranging conversation, including how both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue can turn their collective attention off of a string of recent intraparty fights and toward Democrats.
“My question is how do we get all on the same page and get unified rather than squabbling amongst ourselves,” Sen. John Cornyn said he’ll ask Trump. Cornyn told reporters it’ll be his first time speaking with the president since losing his primary against Trump-backed Ken Paxton.
That may mean Trump and senators Wednesday confront festering questions about the highly unpopular Iran war in the lead up to elections.
Senate Republicans openly criticized Trump’s agreement last week to end the Iran conflict, including a $300 billion reconstruction fund. And congressional Republicans are chafing at the idea Trump is asking for tens of billions of dollars in fresh military funding without briefing most of Congress on the plan.
As lawmakers prepare for a roughly $80 billion emergency Pentagon funding request to land as soon as this week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is also set to meet with the Republican Study Committee Wednesday. While the briefing is meant to focus on the funding requests, Speaker Mike Johnson suggested it could be lawmakers’ only chance for the time being to get questions answered about the administration’s Iran endgame.
“I’m sure he’ll provide a lot of information,” Johnson said when asked about further briefings beyond Hegseth’s. “I mean, we’ll see what the secretary does, and then evaluate after that.”
Also on our radar Wednesday: Democratic lawmakers are teeing up a host of amendments on the war against Iran at a House Appropriations markup of the fiscal 2027 Defense bill, where more funding talks are guaranteed to take place.
Read also: Republicans push to add billions in farm aid to Iran war package
What else we’re watching:
— DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY SPLIT SCREEN: A Zohran Mamdani-backed trio of progressives pulled off a string of upsets during New York’s primary elections Tuesday, dealing a blow to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his leadership allies.
—- HOUSE GOP HUDDLES ON RECON 3.0: Johnson and key House Republicans will meet Wednesday to discuss the next steps for a possible third reconciliation bill as the clock ticks to get a budget resolution moving before the July 4 recess. The speaker said he will know more about the timing for any budget resolution to kick off another party-line bill afterwards. Still, several Budget Committee Republicans are still skeptical the effort will actually gain momentum.
Madison Fernandez and Nick Reisman contributed to this report.
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