The Department of Justice dropped a significant set of documents on Friday, making public the full transcripts and audio recordings from two days of interviews with Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted associate of Jeffrey Epstein.
These sessions, held in July 2025 at a federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida, were led by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and come amid ongoing scrutiny of Epstein’s network and his 2019 death in custody. Maxwell, serving a 20-year sentence for her role in Epstein’s sex trafficking operation, spoke under limited immunity, provided she told the truth.
During the interviews, Maxwell repeatedly dismissed the notion of a secret “client list” tied to Epstein’s crimes—a rumor that has fueled years of speculation.
“There is no list. We’ll start with that. The genesis of that story, I can actually trace for you from its absolute inception, if that is what you’re interested in,” she stated on the first day.
She elaborated at length, pointing to a 2009 incident involving a former Epstein employee, Alfredo Rodriguez, and attorney Brad Edwards. According to Maxwell, Rodriguez had a journal that was misrepresented as a comprehensive list of clients, victims, and accomplices.
“No, there is nothing like that,” she added when pressed further. Reiterating her point, she said, “Right. I just want to reiterate again, there is no list that I am aware of. I’ve never, at any time, at least during the period of time when I was — present.”
On the second day, Maxwell doubled down: “No, there’s no list. There’s no list of people getting massages. I don’t have — I can barely recall all the people. I can barely recall. I struggle to recall actual people that I met. And I may have met a long time that I had even forgotten that — about Mr. Kennedy, or I probably brought it up yesterday. It just came to my mind now. So I don’t have, and there’s no list. There was never a list. There was no — or certainly none that I ever saw. None I ever heard of, none that I ever witnessed, none that I — there’s no list. Has never been a list.”
She also addressed Epstein’s financial clients, naming figures like Les Wexner, Leon Black, Elizabeth Johnson of Johnson & Johnson, and former Barclays CEO Jes Staley, describing Epstein’s services as comprehensive financial management rather than anything illicit.
Maxwell’s comments extended to Epstein’s connections with prominent political figures, offering insights that align with longstanding questions about influence and impropriety. Regarding President Donald Trump, whom Epstein knew socially in the 1990s and early 2000s, Maxwell was unequivocal in her defense. She stated she “never witnessed the President in any inappropriate setting in any way” and described their interactions as “friendly like people are in social settings.”
Broadening her assertion, she added, “never, ever saw any man doing something inappropriate with a woman of any age.
This comes as no surprise to those familiar with Trump’s public stance distancing himself from Epstein after the financier’s scandals emerged, though the two were photographed together at events like Mar-a-Lago gatherings in the past.
When it came to former President Bill Clinton, whose multiple flights on Epstein’s private jet have been well-documented in released logs, Maxwell downplayed any close ties. “I saw them talk. I saw them sit down and have chats about, I don’t know, because I wasn’t either a party or didn’t listen and I know — I would characterize, originally anyway, Mr. Epstein’s interest in him because obviously he’s the former president. But I never saw him — other than that, I saw them be friendly on the plane, but I never — I don’t believe — I don’t recollect, anyway, ever seeing them in any other context. I don’t remember him at his house in New York. Like I said, I don’t believe he ever went to that island. I think that was just a — that was a story that did,” she explained.
Asked if Clinton received massages from Epstein’s victims, Maxwell replied, “I don’t believe so.” She further noted, “Because I don’t think they had a relationship even when I was there. I was — I — President Clinton liked me, and we got along terribly well. But I never saw that warmth or that — that warmth or however you want to characterize it, with Mr. Epstein and cert- — so I didn’t see that. I didn’t see any interest in — I didn’t see President Clinton being interested in Epstein. He was just a rich guy with a plane.”
Despite these denials, Clinton’s 26 documented trips on Epstein’s plane, as revealed in earlier court filings, continue to raise eyebrows among conservatives who question the depth of that association.
Maxwell also touched on other notable names, including former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, whom she recalled meeting briefly, and former Sen. George Mitchell, with whom she traveled to Italy and visited the Vatican. “I traveled with him. We went to — the most memorable affair I went to — well, I was friendly with his wife. Start with that, with Heather. And Heather was in New York, so I hung out with her a few times. We had dinner and I was just friendly, I would say separately with — separately from her husband. I was friends with Heather. I met Heather through her husband, but we became friends,” she said of Mitchell.
For former Colombian President Andrés Pastrana, Maxwell described shared helicopter piloting interests and trips to Colombia and Cuba, where they met Fidel Castro.
One of the more contentious elements of the transcripts is Maxwell’s skepticism about Epstein’s death, officially ruled a suicide while awaiting trial in a Manhattan federal jail. She reiterated her belief that Epstein did not kill himself, echoing doubts voiced by Epstein’s brother and many in conservative circles who have long criticized the handling of his custody and the quick conclusion by authorities. This release follows recent court denials of requests to unseal grand jury materials from both Epstein and Maxwell’s cases, adding to frustrations over transparency in what many see as a web of elite protection.
The DOJ’s memo accompanying the release emphasized that an “exhaustive review” found no such client list or additional incriminating documents. While Maxwell provided no new bombshells implicating others, her statements underscore the persistent mysteries surrounding Epstein’s empire.
This development reinforces the need for full accountability, particularly regarding figures like Clinton whose Epstein links have never been fully explained, while affirming Trump’s distance from any wrongdoing. As Maxwell’s appeal proceeds, these transcripts may fuel further demands for deeper investigations into one of the most infamous scandals in recent history.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.