Ghislaine Maxwell 'answered all questions' from Trump DOJ official, attorney says

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Ghislaine Maxwell, serving a 20-year sentence for procuring underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual gratification, had a “productive” meeting on Thursday at the federal courthouse in Tallahassee with Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, her attorney told reporters.

“He took a full day and asked a lot of questions and Ms. Maxwell answered every single question,” her attorney, David Oscar Markus, said just outside the courthouse following the meeting. “She never invoked a privilege. She never declined to answer. She answered all the questions truthfully, honestly and to the best of her ability.”

Maxwell’s meeting with Blanche follows weeks of furor over a decision by the FBI and Department of Justice to renege on repeated promises to release documents related to criminal investigations into Epstein, the wealthy financier who sexually abused scores of underage girls prior to his death by hanging in 2019.

Since then, the House Oversight Committee has voted to subpoena the Department of Justice for its files on Epstein, and issued a subpoena to interview Maxwell on Aug. 11.

Reacting to backlash, President Donald Trump said he would continue to push for the release of relevant information in the case. His Department of Justice unsuccessfully asked a South Florida judge to release grand jury records. Blanche announced on Tuesday that he intended to meet with Maxwell, who has maintained her innocence, and is appealing her conviction.

“Justice demands courage. For the first time, the Department of Justice is reaching out to Ghislaine Maxwell to ask: what do you know?” Blanche wrote on social media, adding that “no lead is off limits.”

Markus on Thursday declined to comment further, and would not say if there would be a subsequent meeting between Maxwell and Blanche.

“We don’t want to comment about the substance of the meeting, for obvious reasons,” he told reporters.

While it’s unclear how her statement might contain the escalating Epstein scandal, Maxwell could stand to receive a reduced sentence from prosecutors or clemency from the president if she provides credible testimony about any famous people such as politicians who might have had sex with the teen-age girls recruited by Epstein to his residences.

On the other hand, Maxwell might not receive any benefit if she’s unable to provide any “substantial assistance” to prosecutors in the rekindled Epstein investigation.

The Epstein mystery

Epstein has become an important figure for the president’s base. Part of his importance is rooted not only in the heinousness of his crimes — sex abuse against children — but also in the mystery of his death.

In July 2019, after Epstein was indicted on sex-trafficking charges by federal prosecutors in New York City, he hanged himself in his jail cell before he could face trial, authorities have said. He was 66.

Questions surrounding how Epstein could have killed himself under the tight security he was under have unleashed numerous conspiracy theories ranging from whether he was an intelligence asset to whether a cabal of elites who participated in his sex abuse had him murdered and framed it as a suicide.

During Trump’s re-election campaign in 2024, he promised to declassify the Epstein files.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi did declassify files in February but they failed to satisfy Trump’s supporters as they contained little revelatory information. In June, during a public fallout, Elon Musk accused Trump of being implicated in the files. Trump knew Epstein for years.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Bondi had informed Trump his name appeared in the files. The president has not been accused of any wrongdoing. The White House called the story fake.

In an apparent attempt to put an end to the demand for answers among Trump’s most loyal supporters, the Department of Justice approached Maxwell — the only Epstein associate to go to prison. Maxwell has reportedly never given her version of events to federal prosecutors. She did not testify at her defense trial, and had not entered into a plea bargain.

That could now change.

Maxwell’s case

Ghislaine Maxwell is the daughter of British billionaire Robert Maxwell, a former member of Parliament and media mogul whose death has fueled its own conspiracies — he fell from his yacht and died in 1991.

Maxwell was reportedly close with Prince Andrew, who became embroiled in the Epstein sex-abuse case — one of the women who accused Epstein of abuse also accused the prince.

Maxwell was later indicted by New York prosecutors on federal charges of recruiting minor girls for the billionaire at his homes in Manhattan, Palm Beach, New Mexico and the Virgin Islands. Maxwell was found guilty in New York federal court of conspiracy and sex trafficking charges and sentenced to 20 years in 2022.

She’s imprisoned at a federal correctional facility in Tallahassee.

As the Trump administration faces the resurging scandal over the Epstein case, including open hostility from the president’s base about a potential cover-up, the Justice Department’s deputy attorney general, Blanche, reached out to Maxwell’s appellate lawyer, Markus, earlier this week to arrange a meeting. That led to Thursday’s meeting involving Maxwell, Markus, Blanche and other Justice Department lawyers in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tallahassee.

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