CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins has been left stunned by Donald Trump after he said that he would consider pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell.

The President was questioned about the notorious associate of Jeffrey Epstein in the Oval Office shortly after the Supreme Court chose not to review her appeal.

Trump seemed surprised by the inquiry, despite the justices’ recent ruling and the ongoing commotion regarding the ‘Epstein files.’

‘I haven’t heard that name in quite some time. I would need to examine the situation … I will discuss it with the DOJ,’ Trump mentioned to Collins.

The reporter shot back: ‘Why would she be a candidate for clemency? She was convicted of child sex trafficking.’ 

The president replied: ‘I don’t know, I’ll have to look at it. A lot of people have asked me for pardons. I call him “Puff Daddy,” has asked me for a pardon. I’ll have to ask DOJ. I didn’t know they rejected it, I didn’t even know she was even asking for it, frankly.’

Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence after she was convicted of procuring girls as young as 14 for her boyfriend Epstein, the late pedophile financier and former friend of Trump. 

The Supreme Court shot down her appeal on Monday after her lawyers claimed that a deal Epstein struck with federal prosecutors in Florida should have stopped her from being charged in New York.

President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before signing an executive order in the Oval Office at the White House, Monday

CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins was left stunned by Donald Trump after the president said that he would consider pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell 

The decision by the high court avoids a highly sensitive political case amid claims that Trump is covering up the ‘Epstein files’ because they would incriminate him.

The Trump administration had urged the court to stay out of the case in July — specifically to avoid releasing any additional files — when the Justice Department moved to unseal grand jury transcripts amid a surge of controversy.

Maxwell was moved from a low-security federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas after she was interviewed in July by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

That interview came after intense scrutiny on Attorney General Pam Bondi after she had promised to release the ‘Epstein files.’ Bondi is set to testify before the senate on Tuesday morning.

Maxwell’s lawyers contended that a non-prosecution agreement reached in 2007 by federal prosecutors in Miami and Epstein’s lawyers also protected his ‘potential co-conspirators’ from federal charges anywhere in the country. 

She was prosecuted in Manhattan, and the federal appeals court there ruled that the prosecution was proper. A jury found her guilty of sex trafficking a teenage girl, among other charges. 

Maxwell’s trial featured accounts of the sexual exploitation of girls by four women who described being abused as teens in the 1990s and early 2000s at Epstein’s homes.

Neither Maxwell’s lawyers nor the federal Bureau of Prisons has explained the reason for her transfer, but one of her lawyers, David Oscar Markus, has said she is ‘innocent and never should have been tried, much less convicted.’ Markus also was the lead lawyer on her Supreme Court case.

Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein in a picture she gave him on his 50th birthday

Trump speaks to reporters in the Oval Office Monday

Maxwell was interviewed by Blanche at a Florida courthouse. She was given limited immunity, allowing her to speak freely without fear of prosecution for anything she said except for in the event of a false statement.

She repeatedly denied witnessing any sexually inappropriate interactions involving Trump, according to records released in August meant to distance the president from the disgraced financier.

Epstein was arrested in 2019 on sex trafficking charges and was accused of sexually abusing dozens of teenage girls. A month later, he was found dead in a New York jail cell in what investigators described as a suicide.

The Epstein case had consumed Trump’s administration following an announcement from the FBI and the Justice Department in July that Epstein had killed himself despite conspiracy theories to the contrary, that a ‘client list’ that Attorney General Pam Bondi had intimated was on her desk did not actually exist, and that no additional documents from the high-profile investigation were suitable to be released. 

Trump and his then-girlfriend Melania Knauss, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago in 2000

The announcement produced outrage from conspiracy theorists and Trump supporters who had been hoping to see proof of a government coverup.

That expectation was driven in part by comments from officials, including FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, who on podcasts before taking their current positions had repeatedly promoted the idea that damaging details about prominent people were being withheld. 

Patel, for instance, said in at least one podcast interview before becoming FBI director that Epstein’s ‘black book’ was under the ‘direct control of the director of the FBI.’

But the Justice Department said its review of evidence in the government´s possession determined that no ‘further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.’

The department noted that much of the material was placed under seal by a court to protect victims and ‘only a fraction’ of it ‘would have been aired publicly had Epstein gone to trial.’

Faced with fury from his base, Trump sought to quickly turn the page, shutting down questioning of Bondi about Epstein at a White House Cabinet meeting and deriding as ‘weaklings’ supporters he said were falling for the ‘Jeffrey Epstein Hoax.’