Ghislaine Maxwell interviewed again by deputy US attorney general

The Guardian

2 days ago

The deputy US attorney general, Todd Blanche, held a second in-person meeting on Friday with Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex trafficker and longtime associate of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Blanche had confirmed the two met behind closed doors in Tallahassee, Florida, on Thursday, at the federal prosecutor's office within the federal courthouse in the state capital, and they met again on Friday.
Maxwell's lawyer, David Oscar Markus, on Friday afternoon said Blanche had finished his questioning for the day, NBC News first reported.
Markus told reporters as he left the courthouse in downtown Tallahassee: 'We started this morning right around 9 o'clock, and went to now lunchtime, and we're finished after all day, yesterday and today. Ghislaine answered every single question asked of her over the last day and a half. She answered those questions honestly, truthfully, to the best of her ability. She never invoked a privilege. She never refused to answer a question.'
He added: 'They asked about every single, every possible thing you could imagine. Everything.'
The justice department has not said whether Blanche intends to question Maxwell further. Markus said he did not know whether the discussions would have any impact on her case. He had previously said Thursday's meeting was 'very productive'.
Blanche had announced earlier in the week that he had contacted Maxwell's lawyers to see if she might have 'information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims'.
Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence at a federal prison in Tallahassee, after a jury convicted her of sex trafficking in 2021.
An uproar continues to engulf Donald Trump and calls have intensified for his administration to release all details of the federal investigation into Epstein, while questions remain about whether Maxwell has any fresh light to shed on her former boyfriend's crimes.
Meanwhile, the US supreme court is due to wade into the controversy and decide whether to hear a bid by Maxwell to overturn her criminal conviction.
Epstein killed himself in 2019 in a jail cell in New York while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. Trump, dogged by questions about his ties to Epstein, headed to Scotland on Friday for a trip that will mix golf with politics mostly out of public view. Protests await the president in the UK over his extreme agenda while scandal nips at his heels in the US.
Further talking to reporters after Friday's meeting, Markus said: 'We don't know how it's going to play out. We just know that this was the first opportunity she's ever been given to answer questions about what happened, and so the truth will come out about what happened with Mr Epstein. And she's the person who's answering those questions.'
Prosecutors and the judge who oversaw Maxwell's 2021 trial have said that she made multiple false statements under oath and failed to take responsibility for her actions. She was convicted for sex trafficking and other crimes, and sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.
'People have questioned her honesty, which I think is just wrong,' Markus said.
Asked if Maxwell had received an offer of clemency from the government, Markus said no offer had been made. Trump rejected the idea of a pardon for Maxwell after landing in the UK on Friday. 'A lot of people have been asking me about pardons' for Maxwell, he said. 'Obviously, this is no time to be talking about pardons.'
Although the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, earlier this year had promised to release additional materials related to possible Epstein clients, the justice department reversed course this month and issued a memo concluding there was no basis to continue investigating and there was no evidence of a client list or blackmail.
Sign up to This Week in Trumpland
A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration
after newsletter promotion
Since then, the department has sought permission to unseal grand jury transcripts from its prior investigations into Epstein and Maxwell.
On Wednesday, US district judge Robin Rosenberg denied one of those requests.
Trump's name, along with many other high-profile individuals, appeared multiple times on flight logs for Epstein's private plane in the 1990s, while several media outlets have this month reported previously unpublicized and friendly communications from the US president to the high-profile financier.
Meanwhile, the supreme court justices, now on their summer recess, are expected in late September to consider whether to take up the appeal by Maxwell against her conviction in 2021 by a jury in New York for helping Epstein sexually abuse teenage girls.
Maxwell's lawyers have told the supreme court that her conviction was invalid because a non-prosecution and plea agreement that federal prosecutors had made with Epstein in Florida in 2007 also shielded his associates and should have barred her criminal prosecution in New York. Her lawyers have a Monday deadline for filing their final written brief in their appeal to the court.
Some legal experts see merit in Maxwell's claim, noting that it touches on an unsettled matter of US law that has divided some of the nation's regional federal appeals courts.
Mitchell Epner, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice, said there was a chance that the supreme court would take up the case, and noted the disagreement among appeals courts. Such a split among circuit courts can be a factor when the nation's top judicial body considers whether or not to hear a case.
'The question of whether a plea agreement from one US attorney's office binds other federal prosecution as a whole is a serious issue that has split the circuits,' Epner said.
While uncommon, 'there have been several cases presenting the issue over the years', Epner added.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting