Folks aren’t going to like hearing this, but there’s nothing untoward or unreasonable about her demanding immunity before testifying. Any lawyer would advise any person in a similar situation to either demand immunity or to avail themselves of their right against self-incrimination. This is literally the foundation of due process and if you don’t care about that for “monsters,” then you don’t really care about it for anyone because it’s real easy for the state/media to make anyone a monster. Immunity isn’t even necessarily a good thing for the person being questioned (prosecutors can non-consensually “immunize” an unwilling witness to force their testimony, opening the witness up to theoretically unlimited contempt penalties for failure to testify).
What is untoward is the DOJ “interviewing” her behind closed doors, particularly when their guy has pardon power and they’ve refused to release the docs they have.
Maxwell is, to put it offensively mildly, a bad guy in this story, but she’s not the bad guy. For every person she trafficked, there is a rich predator who continues to pay no price whatsoever. I have no hopes that she’ll decide to “do the right thing” out of any sense of morality. I do, however, have a modicum of hope that she’ll be so bitter about being the only person punished that she goes scorched earth in her testimony.
What is untoward is the DOJ “interviewing” her behind closed doors, particularly when their guy has pardon power and they’ve refused to release the docs they have.
I think this hits why the request is upsetting.
You’re totally right that bargaining for immunity is normal. In fact that’s normally how you flip lower guys to tattle on the bigger leaders in white collar crimes.
However I argue there’s a few things that make this icky.
She’s not a small fish in this pond. She was one of the partners.
All of the behind the scenes with trumps personal lawyer.
Shes been convicted of perjury before covering up for Epstein and refused to say anything during her trial. Why would anyone want to give her immunity and trust her to speak truthfully?
I guess what I’m saying is that the immunity thing is not the thing to be upset about here. Agree 100% that no reasonable person would expect her to speak truthfully, but that would be the case with or without immunity.
Folks aren’t going to like hearing this, but there’s nothing untoward or unreasonable about her demanding immunity before testifying. Any lawyer would advise any person in a similar situation to either demand immunity or to avail themselves of their right against self-incrimination. This is literally the foundation of due process and if you don’t care about that for “monsters,” then you don’t really care about it for anyone because it’s real easy for the state/media to make anyone a monster. Immunity isn’t even necessarily a good thing for the person being questioned (prosecutors can non-consensually “immunize” an unwilling witness to force their testimony, opening the witness up to theoretically unlimited contempt penalties for failure to testify).
What is untoward is the DOJ “interviewing” her behind closed doors, particularly when their guy has pardon power and they’ve refused to release the docs they have.
Maxwell is, to put it offensively mildly, a bad guy in this story, but she’s not the bad guy. For every person she trafficked, there is a rich predator who continues to pay no price whatsoever. I have no hopes that she’ll decide to “do the right thing” out of any sense of morality. I do, however, have a modicum of hope that she’ll be so bitter about being the only person punished that she goes scorched earth in her testimony.
I think this hits why the request is upsetting.
You’re totally right that bargaining for immunity is normal. In fact that’s normally how you flip lower guys to tattle on the bigger leaders in white collar crimes.
However I argue there’s a few things that make this icky.
I guess what I’m saying is that the immunity thing is not the thing to be upset about here. Agree 100% that no reasonable person would expect her to speak truthfully, but that would be the case with or without immunity.