Ghislaine Maxwell's meetings with Justice Department shrouded in secrecy

CNBC

20 hours ago

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche completed nine hours of meetings over two days with Ghislaine Maxwell on Friday but made no public statements about what she said or the next steps in the Justice Department's much-criticized Jeffrey Epstein investigation.
Former prosecutors said it was highly unusual — and potentially unprecedented — for a the department's No. 2 official to personally interview a witness. Secrecy in a criminal investigation is normal, but the prosecutors involved in the case would typically be included in questioning.
"I've never heard of a deputy attorney general doing anything like this before," said a former senior Justice Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Victims of Epstein and Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 of recruiting and grooming multiple teenage girls to be sexually abused by the late financier, questioned the lack of transparency as well. Jack Scarola, a lawyer representing roughly 20 Epstein victims, said he asked to attend the Maxwell interviews but was not included.
Berit Berger, a former federal prosecutor in New York, said the interviews by Blanche, who worked as Trump's former defense lawyer, may be performative.
"It may be just a way of being able to say, 'Look, we dotted every I and crossed every T,'" she said. "There's value to being able to say that we've tried to speak to everyone we possibly could, including the co-defendant."
Attorney General Pam Bondi, Blanche and President Donald Trump himself have struggled to quell the uproar since the DOJ and FBI announced on July 6 that an exhaustive Epstein case review had not uncovered evidence that justified investigating other individuals. FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino — who have both spread conspiracy theories about the Epstein case — backed those findings and a DOJ decision to release no other Epstein case documents.
Catherine Christian, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney and an NBC News legal analyst, said the Maxwell interviews could also be an effort to protect Trump, who now faces one of the largest political crises of his second term in the furor over the Epstein investigation.
Trump, like dozens of other wealthy Americans, socialized with Epstein. He is among hundreds of individuals whose names appear in 100,000 pages of Epstein case documents reviewed by the DOJ and the FBI.
"It's hard to believe this is anything but performative," Christian said. "Or Todd Blanche, just wanting to have her on the record saying, 'Yes, President Trump had nothing to do with any of this. He was not a client.'"
Maxwell's lawyer, David Oscar Markus, is a top Florida criminal defense lawyer and a friend of Blanche's. Blanche appeared on Markus' podcast in 2024, where the host praised Blanche's legal skills. After Friday's meeting with Blanche and Maxwell, Markus told reporters that the deputy attorney general "did an amazing job" and asked Maxwell thorough questions.
"She was asked maybe about 100 different people," said Markus, who did not disclose which individuals Maxwell was questioned about. "She answered questions about everybody, and she didn't hold anything back," he said. "They asked about every single, every possible thing you could imagine, everything."
A senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said that Maxwell was granted limited immunity by the Justice Department to answer questions about the Epstein case.
Granting limited immunity is common in criminal cases and allows defendants to provide information without fear that it will be used against them in court.
The immunity is "limited" because it only applies if the defendant is telling the truth. If it is determined that a defendant lied during the interviews, then the agreement becomes void. Prosecutors can take into consideration a defendant's cooperation and recommend a plea deal or a reduced sentence.
This is not expected in Maxwell's case, as she has already been convicted and sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. Maxwell's lawyer, Markus, has argued that Maxwell's trial was unfair and an appeal of her conviction is pending before the Supreme Court.
Trump, like all presidents, has the power to pardon or commute the sentence of anyone convicted of a federal crime. Asked about Epstein's case on Friday morning, Trump said the focus should be on other people who socialized with Epstein, such as former President Bill Clinton and Larry Summers, the former treasury secretary and Harvard University president.
"You should focus on Clinton," the president told reporters. "You should focus on the president of Harvard, the former president of Harvard. You should focus on some of the hedge fund guys."
"I'll give you a list. These guys lived with Jeffrey Epstein. I sure as hell didn't," Trump said.
Asked if he was considering granting Maxwell a pardon or commuting her sentence, Trump said, "It's something I haven't thought about."
"I'm allowed to do it," he added.
Mimi Rocah, a former federal prosecutor in New York, said she believes the recent firing of Maurene Comey, a lead prosecutor in the Maxwell case and the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, was an effort to give Trump appointees full control of the Maxwell case, limit transparency and silence dissent.
"That does not seem coincidental. It seems like they wanted Maurene not to be present in the Department of Justice," Rocah said. "To be able to say, 'What the heck, you can't go talk to my client or my defendant.'"
Rocah, a Democrat who served as Westchester County district attorney from 2020 to 2024, criticized Blanche's meetings with Maxwell, saying his apparent failure to include a prosecutor with deep knowledge of her crimes was unfair to Epstein's victims.
"The head of that entire institution that is supposed to be about protecting victims is talking to her, giving her a platform to say God knows what, without much way to verify it or not," Rocah said. "The real people who could test her truth-telling are the people who worked on the case, not Todd."