Officials from the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) have interviewed sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell in Florida, as pressure continues to mount on the administration of US President Donald Trump over the handling of the files of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Former British socialite Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence after being convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking minors on behalf of Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial in his own paedophile trafficking case.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche – Trump’s former personal lawyer for his hush money trial and two federal criminal cases – met with Maxwell on Thursday, according to her lawyer.
Images captured by ABC News showed Blanche and his entourage, including Acting Associate Deputy Attorney General Diego Pestana, entering the US Attorney’s office, which is located in a federal courthouse in Tallahassee, Florida.
Maxwell’s attorney, David Oscar Markus, said: “We had a very productive day today with the Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Ghislaine Maxwell.”
Markus told reporters that Maxwell answered each of Blanche’s questions, adding, “We don’t want to comment about the substance of the meeting for obvious reasons.”
In a social media post on Tuesday, Blanche said that Trump “has told us to release all credible evidence” and that if Maxwell has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the DOJ “will hear what she has to say”.
Maxwell, the daughter of the late British press baron, Robert Maxwell, is the only former Epstein associate who was convicted in connection with his activities, which conspiracy theorists allege included trafficking young models for VIPs.
Joyce Vance, an ex-federal prosecutor who now teaches law at the University of Alabama, said any “‘new’ testimony [Maxwell] offers is inherently unreliable unless backed by evidence”.
“Trump could give Ghislaine Maxwell a pardon on his last day in office, in exchange for favourable testimony now,” Vance said in a post on X. “She knows he’s her only chance for release.”
‘Client list’
The meeting with Maxwell marks another attempt by the Trump administration to defuse anger among the Republican president’s own supporters over what they have long seen as a cover-up of sex crimes by Epstein, a wealthy financier with high-level connections.
On July 7, the DOJ and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a memo saying that a review of Epstein’s case yielded no new evidence, including no “client list”.
But that finding caused an uproar among Trump’s MAGA base, which noted that US Attorney General Pam Bondi herself had referred to a client list “sitting on my desk right now” earlier this year.
Members of Trump’s base have long embraced conspiracy theories about rings of sex offenders in the highest levels of government, and some have questioned the circumstances surrounding Epstein’s death, speculating that it was an orchestrated cover-up.
On Wednesday, the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed Maxwell to appear before Congress next month, noting in a statement that “the facts and circumstances surrounding both your and Mr Epstein’s cases have received immense public interest and scrutiny”.
The committee’s Republican chair, US Representative James Comer, noted in his statement that while the DOJ was moving forward with its interview, “it is imperative that Congress conduct oversight of the federal government’s enforcement of sex trafficking laws generally and specifically its handling of the investigation and prosecution of you and Mr Epstein”.
Democrats have also pushed for the release of the Epstein files, and on Wednesday, a Republican-led panel pushed forward a Democrat-led subcommittee subpoena demanding that the DOJ release the Epstein files.
In an interview with political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen, US Representative Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat, said she would trust Congress to interview Maxwell more than the DOJ, noting the potential for “them sanitising the information that we get, or potentially engaging in some type of threats, or potentially offering a pardon if certain things were said or not said”.
Source link
