Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said they left an interview Thursday with Ted Waitt, Ghislaine Maxwell’s former boyfriend, largely empty-handed after an hourslong grilling as part of the panel’s ongoing Jeffrey Epstein investigation.
The committee was interested in what Waitt knew about Epstein’s crimes during his relationship with Maxwell, a former British socialite who is now serving 20 years in prison for her part in Epstein’s sex trafficking scheme. Waitt amassed his wealth founding the computer company Gateway and has become a philanthropist supporting ocean conservation. He has not been accused of wrongdoing in connection with the late convicted sex offender.
“Epstein was committing some of his crimes while Waitt and Maxwell were in a romantic relationship, so [we] want to understand what if anything he knew about that,” said Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Va.), a member of the Oversight panel, before entering the interview room Thursday morning, adding, “I find it very hard to believe that they had no knowledge or indication of it.”
But the interview did not appear to be fruitful. Partway through the interview, Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) claimed that the committee had learned nothing new.
“I’m interested to see what the Republicans want to know from this,” Subramanyam told reporters. “Maybe it was to connect [President Bill] Clinton to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell a little more, because [Waitt] came up in the Clinton deposition.”
Waitt, whose communications with Maxwell appear in the Epstein files released by the Justice Department, also happens to be a friend of the former president and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He brought Maxwell as a plus-one to the wedding of their daughter, Chelsea Clinton, in 2010 and she appears in at least one photo taken during the ceremony.
Hillary Clinton said she did not recall speaking with Maxwell at the wedding during her deposition before the committee in February.
A GOP committee spokesperson countered the claim that the interview was ineffective in producing new information, saying in a statement that Democrats “made today’s interview as they always do all about President [Donald] Trump, and Ted Waitt had no information about him.”
“In fact, he said Maxwell never brought Trump up,” the spokesperson continued. “Unlike Democrats, Republicans asked substantive questions and gained new information. We will have follow up actions soon.”
During the interview, Democrats only asked about Trump once, according to a person familiar with the questioning who was granted anonymity to describe the closed-door conversation.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) said Waitt could not recall the answers to many of the panel’s questions.
In her interview with then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in July, Maxwell said she began dating Waitt around 2003 after her relationship with Epstein and stayed with him until around 2010. She met him at a dinner with Bill Clinton in Hong Kong, she told Blanche.
Maxwell also maintained that her former paramour was the subject of blackmail because of her association with Epstein. She stated that Waitt “was asked for $10 million to keep me out of any of Epstein’s civil suits” in 2009, when the convicted sex offender was in litigation.
“He had everything. He was way, way more wealthy than Epstein, if anyone cares,” Maxwell said last July, of her former boyfriend.
A lawyer for Waitt did not return a request for comment.
