US Justice Department official meets with Epstein associate Maxwell

WASHINGTON: Deputy US Attorney General Todd Blanche said he met accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein's longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell in Tallahassee, Florida, on Thursday (Jul 24) and will meet with her again on Friday.

Maxwell's lawyer, David Oscar Markus, speaking separately after Thursday's meeting, said, "We had a very productive day today with the Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Ghislaine Maxwell."

Images captured by ABC News on Thursday 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.

Markus told reporters that Maxwell answered each of Blanche's questions. "We don't want to comment about the substance of the meeting for obvious reasons," he added.

Blanche had announced earlier in the week that he had reached out to 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. She is appealing her sentence.

President Donald Trump and his administration have been facing mounting pressure from Trump's supporters to release additional information about the Justice Department's investigation into Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 in a jail cell while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.

TRUMP FACES PRESSURE TO RELEASE EPSTEIN FILES

Blanche wrote on X that he met Maxwell on Thursday and will continue his interview of her on Friday. The Justice Department, he said, "will share additional information about what we learned at the appropriate time."

Although 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.

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, finding that it did not fall into any of the exceptions to rules requiring grand jury material be kept secret.

Trump's name, along with many other high-profile individuals, appeared multiple times on flight logs for Epstein's private plane in the 1990s.

The Justice Department released some records that contained Trump's name earlier this year.