Ghislaine Maxwell, the jailed British socialite and longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein, invoked her Fifth Amendment right and refused to answer questions during a closed-door virtual hearing before the House Oversight Committee on Monday. The hearing, which lasted less than an hour, formed part of a bipartisan congressional investigation into the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein case.

Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence in Texas following her 2021 conviction for trafficking underage girls to Epstein, making her the only associate of his to be imprisoned.

Republican Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and Democratic Representative Ro Khanna said they had expected Maxwell to plead the Fifth. Her attorney, David Oscar Markus, confirmed the move, citing a pending habeas petition challenging her conviction as fundamentally unfair.

Markus added that Maxwell would be willing to speak “fully and honestly” about the Epstein case if granted clemency by President Donald Trump, arguing that she alone can provide a complete account and asserting that figures such as Trump and former President Bill Clinton were not involved in any wrongdoing.

Maxwell’s refusal comes amid renewed scrutiny following the release of more than three million documents related to Epstein’s prosecution, which exposed his wide network of powerful political and business figures, including Bill Gates.

Committee staff had spent months negotiating Maxwell’s testimony, postponing an initial August deposition at her legal team’s request while awaiting a Supreme Court decision on her appeal, which was ultimately declined in October.

Her silence before Congress stands in contrast to her conduct earlier this year, when she reportedly answered all questions during a two-day interview with Todd Blanche, then Donald Trump’s Deputy Attorney General and formerly his personal lawyer.

According to her attorney, Maxwell did not invoke privilege during that interview and largely distanced Trump from Epstein, whom Trump had cut ties with years before Epstein’s arrest. Democratic Representative Robert Garcia, the committee’s ranking member, criticized Maxwell’s refusal to testify, questioning whom she was protecting and why.