Ghislaine Maxwell pleads the Fifth more than a dozen times in a House Oversight deposition.

Hon. Monday. The House Oversight Committee, conducting its fourth or fifth or sixth investigation of the Jeffrey Epstein matter, depending on how you count, took a virtual deposition from Ghislaine Maxwell, who is in prison, serving twenty years, for running the operation the Committee is now investigating.

She invoked the Fifth Amendment more than a dozen times. She invoked it on every question. She invoked it on the question of whether she had ever trafficked young women. She invoked it on the question of whether she had ever coerced young women. She invoked it on the question of who else was involved. She invoked it on the question of whether she knew Epstein was abusing minors. That is the plea-everything posture, hon. That is the lawyer’s posture in the first ten minutes of every felony arraignment. It is, in this room, the entire deposition.

So far, normal. The bar for this kind of hearing was set in the Mafia trials. We know how the picture goes.

Then her lawyer did something interesting. The lawyer, outside the chamber of silence, volunteered, on the record, that the President and the former President Clinton are innocent of any wrongdoing. In a deposition in which his client would not answer questions about whether she had committed crimes, he answered the question of whether other people had not. You ever notice how careful lawyers are with that math? Pleading the fifth on your own conduct and vouching for someone else’s, in the same forty-five minutes, is not a legal posture. It is a signal.

He also asked the committee, on the record, for clemency for his client in exchange for unfiltered testimony. That is, in the trade, called let’s make a deal. It is a bargaining position. It is also, hon, not subtle. Maxwell, the woman serving twenty years, will talk if she gets out. Until then, she will not. The character reference for the current sitting head of state came in the meantime.

The deposition was closed door. The transcript will be filed. The committee’s leak controls on these proceedings have, on the public record, not held. The character reference will, in the fullness of time, find its way to the cable hour as a quote, on a graphic, with the word innocent in capital letters.

That is the entire morning. Closed door, on Capitol Hill, with the woman who knows.

Hon. Hon.

Funny how that works.