Maine Gov. Janet Mills’ name has surfaced in the latest U.S. Justice Department release of files related to the late pedophile and mystery powerbroker Jeffrey Epstein, who allegedly committed suicide.
The Maine Wire’s Steve Robinson, Thomas Shattuck, Graham Pollard, and Jon Fetherston all contributed to this reporting.
Maine Democrats have been calling for over a year for the release of more files related to infamous pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, but the disclosures may have caused some collateral damage for Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, candidate for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination.
The sensational allegations against Gov. Mills surfaced Friday in a trove of documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice as part of its ongoing disclosure of materials related to the investigation into Epstein’s sex-trafficking and espionage ring.
For years, Epstein’s role in the American and Israeli intelligence communities has mystified international audiences, stoking conspiracy theories – many of which have turned out to be true. The Epstein enigma only intensified when he was found dead in his maximum security jail cell on Aug. 10, 2019, a mysterious death that was ultimately ruled a suicide.
The records related to Gov. Mills and other figures in Maine politics include a detailed tip submitted to the Southern District of New York (SDNY) following the 2020 arrest of Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell. An anonymous tipster alleges that Mills was “instrumental” in covering up child sexual abuse and was “credibly named” in cocaine trafficking.
The tipster appears to have a deep familiarity with Maine politics and powerful figures from Maine political history.
That includes a former Maine State Police Chief Andrew Demers, who served for 25 years and was later arrested for sexually abusing a child, and Maine’s former FBI Bureau chief, who went to jail for raping a 10-year-old girl.
Although the DOJ attempted to redact the tipster’s information, contextual clues and poorly redacted URLs point toward Lori Handrahan. Handrahan has a Ph.D., is a professor in Washington, and spent time as a child in both New Sharon and Sorrento, Maine. She’s also an author and a prominent anti-child trafficking activist.
According to Handrahan, Demers was influential in stopping child sexual exploitation investigations targeting some of Maine’s most influential figures, including former U.S. Sen. Bill Cohen (R-Maine), who served as Secretary of Defense under President Bill Clinton.
“Every one of the cases that [Demers] shut down, including Bill Cohen’s, related to child sex abuse should have been re-opened,” Handrahan said.
According to the email, Handrahan alleges that the FBI’s Kenoyer was protected by a judge — Donald Alexander — who also protected trial attorney Michael Waxman.
Waxman was the attorney for Igor Malenko, who had been married to Handrahan and had gained custody of their young daughter following a messy divorce.
“Maine’s current Governor Janet Mills (who grew up with me-her mother was my high school English teacher) has been instrumental in the crimes against my daughter and I and in protecting Waxman/Malenko,” Handrahan said. “She has also been credibly named as involved in cocaine trafficking.”
Handrahan declined to comment further on her allegations during a text message exchange.
The broad-ranging and conspiratorial nature of the allegations are difficult to substantiate independently; however, news archive records verify much of what Handrahan told the SDNY.
A Sept. 13, 1987 story from the LA Times reports the following: “A judge sentenced a former FBI agent to nine months in prison and two more years of house arrest for sexually assaulting a 12-year-old neighbor girl… Kennebec County Superior Court Judge Donald G. Alexander imposed the sentence Thursday on John H. Kenoyer, 65, the FBI’s former Augusta bureau chief.”
Especially by the standards of 1987, nine months in prison is a lenient sentence for sexually assaulting a 12-year-old child — a sentence reminiscent of the nine months in jail Eliot Cutler received after he pleaded guilty to possessing hundreds of thousands of images of child pornography.
Although allegations that Mills was involved in cocaine use and trafficking have lingered in Maine politics since at least the early 1990s, this is the first time she’s ever been connected to Epstein or implicated in a child sex abuse cover-up.
However, there are no other documents to substantiate the allegation that Mills engaged in the conduct described in the tip submitted to the SDNY.
The Janet Mills Child Abuse Cover-Up Connection
The release includes a July 6, 2020, email chain forwarded within the SDNY United States Attorney’s Office titled “Maxwell Waxman Malenko Maine”. The correspondence, sent to the office’s Victim/Witness Coordinator, was prompted by the SDNY’s public encouragement for victims to report potential grooming and abuse “no matter how long ago”.
The central document is a report from a victim advocate who claims Maine’s former Attorney General and current Governor protected a suspected child abuser. The report details a harrowing case involving the alleged sexual assault of a two-year-old girl by her father, Igor Malenko, and his attorney, Michael Waxman.
“Maine’s current Governor Janet Mills… has been instrumental in the crimes against my daughter and I and in protecting Waxman/Malenko,” the anonymous tipster wrote to federal authorities. The document further alleges that Waxman, described as possessing “Epstein level wealth,” vowed to use his “vast family fortune” to take the child from her mother.
The report also ropes in other high-profile Maine figures, alleging that former U.S. Senators George Mitchell and William Cohen have been “credibly named as child sex abusers/traffickers.” However, the link offered as supporting evidence for that allegation goes to a website that yields no information on Cohen or Mitchell.
The dead link notwithstanding, Mitchell’s ties to Epstein are well documented.
Mitchell, the former Senate Majority Leader during the administration of former President Bill Clinton — another man with infamous and well-documented links to Epstein, — has seen his reputation increasingly scrutinized following reports from The Maine Wire and other outlets highlighting his documented friendship with Epstein and his appearance on flight logs for Epstein’s private jet.
As The Maine Wire reported in Jan. 2024:
Mitchell, who served under Clinton from 1995 to 2001 as the U.S. Special Envoy for Northern Ireland, is known internationally as the architect of the Good Friday Agreement, which brought an end to the 30-year violent conflict known as The Troubles.
But his impeccable reputation — as well as his ties to Clinton and Epstein — were called into question in 2019, when Giuffre testified in a sworn deposition that Mitchell was among the men she was ordered to have sex with by Maxwell.
“I want you to tell me a single time that you recall Ghislaine Maxwell using the words to you and directing you to go have sex with another person –,” an attorney asked Giuffre, according to the transcript.
“They instructed me to go to George Mitchell,” Giuffre replied, naming former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and model Jean Luc Brunel in the same answer.
Unlike Mitchell, there has never been any credible information released publicly linking former Maine U.S. Sen. William Cohen, who also served as Secretary of Defense under Clinton, to Epstein. Indeed, this is the first time records have surfaced connecting Cohen to the infamous financier and sexual predator.
Janet Mills Lingering ‘Cocaine’ Claims
The newly released Epstein materials explicitly reference long-standing allegations of cocaine trafficking involving Gov. Mills.
The allegations are bolstered by a 1991 news clip from the Sun-Journal titled “Mills loses bid to end drug probe rumors”. The article reports that Mills, then a District Attorney, failed to obtain a restraining order to silence five unidentified police officers who were allegedly talking to a reporter about a “federal grand jury investigation into alleged drug use by her and misuse of her public office”.
Her lawyer at the time, Harold J. Friedman, claimed the information was “slanderous and highly damaging,” but a judge denied the request for a temporary restraining order, ruling there was “little likelihood” she could prove the defendants had access to secret grand jury information.
Mills has consistently dismissed such claims as a “political witch hunt.”
However, a 1995 U.S. Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) memorandum released last year tells a different story.
The 1995 report, authored by Counsel Michael E. Shaheen Jr., confirms that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maine and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) conducted “intensive investigations in 1988 and 1989 into cocaine trafficking in Maine.”
During the probe, agents “obtained information about cocaine use by Janet Mills, the elected District Attorney for Androscoggin, Oxford, and Franklin counties.”
Crucially, the OPR concluded that the investigation into Mills was not a political hit job:
“We conclude that the Mills investigation was conducted properly in accordance with Department of Justice policies and procedures. We also find Ms. Mills’ specific allegations of misconduct to be unsubstantiated”.
The report further noted that the “USAO in Maine conducted a proper investigation of serious allegations; no misconduct of any kind can fairly be attributed to any member of that office.”
Mills was never charged with any crime as a result of the investigation.
The tipster who contacted the SDNY in 2020 characterized the situation in Maine as a systemic failure to protect children, noting that “the criminals have been totally protected by USG [U.S. Government] employees.”
The report cites the convictions of former FBI Bureau Chief John Kenoyer and former State Police Chief Andrew Demers for crimes against children as evidence of a “broken” system.
“Hoping and praying you will investigate and act,” the July 2020 report concludes, addressing the same prosecutors who eventually secured the conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell.
Gov. Mills’ office did not respond to the allegation that she helped to protect men accused of child sex crimes. She has consistently denied allegations that she used or uses cocaine.
Interesting that your “reporters” didn’t mention that the “tipster” (Dr. Lori Handrahan) who reported to the SDNY was determined to be mentally ill by US Federal Judge George Singal and was ordered to pay her husband $450,000 and her daughter $300,000 in punitive damages for maliciously spreading rumors that her ex-husband sexually abused the daughter, who was two years old at the time. The judge also determined that she forced her daughter to lie about the abuse to authorities. The husband was eventually granted sole custody by the court.
This is your “credible” source called in the “tip” about Janet Mills. She was angry that Mills wouldn’t intervene as AG in her case. Nice job reporting fellas! The Maine Liar strikes again.
okay. what are they going to do about it?
Interesting that your “reporters” didn’t mention that the “tipster” (Dr. Lori Handrahan) who reported to the SDNY was determined to be mentally ill by US Federal Judge George Singal and was ordered to pay her husband $450,000 and her daughter $300,000 in punitive damages for maliciously spreading rumors that her ex-husband sexually abused the daughter, who was two years old at the time. The judge also determined that she forced her daughter to lie about the abuse to authorities. The husband was eventually granted sole custody by the court.
This is your “credible” source called in the “tip” about Janet Mills. She was angry that Mills wouldn’t intervene as AG in her case. Nice job reporting fellas! The Maine Liar strikes again.