The attached attorney general Todd Blanche completed nine hours of meetings for two days with Ghislaine Maxwell on Friday, but did not make public statements about what he said or the next steps in the very critical investigation of Jeffrey Epstein of the Department of Justice.
The former prosecutors said he was very unusual, and potentially unprecedented, for an official number 2 of the department to personally interview a witness. The secret in a criminal investigation is normal, but the prosecutors involved in the case would generally be included in the interrogation.
“He had never heard of an deputy attorney general doing something like this before,” said a former official of the Superior Justice Department, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The victims of Epstein and Maxwell, who were sentenced in 2021 for recruiting and preparing multiple adolescents to be sexually abused by the deceased financial, also questioned the lack of transparency. Jack Scarola, a lawyer who represents approximately 20 victims of Epstein, said he asked to attend Maxwell’s interviews but was not included.
Berit Berger, a former federal prosecutor in New York, said Blanche’s interviews, who worked as a former defense lawyer of Trump, can be performative.
“It can be just a way of being able to say: ‘Look, we splashed every self and cross every t’,” he said. “There is value to be able to say that we have tried to talk to all we could, including the coacked.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi, Blanche and President Donald Trump himself have fought to suffocate the uproar since the Department of Justice and the FBI announced on July 6 That an exhaustive review of the case of Epstein had not discovered evidence to justify the investigation of other individuals. The director of the FBI, Kash Patel, and the deputy director Dan Bongino, who have Both spread the conspiracy theories about Epstein’s case: they supported those findings and a decision of the Department of Justice not to release any other case of Epstein.
Catherine Christian, former Prosecutor of the Assistant District of Manhattan and Legal Analyst of NBC News, said that Maxwell’s interviews could also be an effort to protect Trump, who now faces one of the greatest political crises of her second mandate in the fury about Epstein’s investigation.
Trump, like dozens of other rich Americans, socialized with Epstein. It is among hundreds of people whose names appear in 100,000 pages of cases of Epstein cases reviewed by the DOJ and the FBI.
“It’s hard to believe that this is anything but performative,” said Christian. “Or Todd Blanche, just wanting to have her in the registry saying: ‘Yes, President Trump had nothing to do with any of this. He was not a client'”.
What was Maxwell asked?
Maxwell’s lawyer, David Oscar Markus, is a Criminal Defense lawyer from Florida and a friend of Blanche. Blanche appeared in the 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 incredible job” and ask Maxwell questions.
“Maybe about 100 different people,” said Markus, who did not reveal about which Maxwell individuals was interrogated. “She answered questions about everyone, and didn’t stop anything,” he said. “They asked about all, every possible thing you can imagine, everything.”
A senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said that Maxwell received a limited immunity by the Department of Justice to answer questions about Epstein’s case.
Granting limited immunity is common in criminal cases and allows defendants to provide information without fear of being used against them in court.
Immunity is “limited” because it only applies if the defendant tells the truth. If it is determined that a defendant lied during the interviews, then the agreement becomes zero. Prosecutors may take into account the cooperation of a defendant and recommend a guilt or a reduced sentence.
This is not expected in the case of Maxwell, since it has already been sentenced and sentenced to 20 years in a federal prison. Maxwell’s lawyer, Markus, has argued that Maxwell’s trial was unfair and an appeal of his sentence is pending before the Supreme Court.
Sorry or potential switching
Trump, like all presidents, has the power to forgive or travel the sentence of any person convicted of a federal crime. When asked about Epstein’s case on Friday morning, Trump said the approach should be in other people who socialized with Epstein, such as former President Bill Clinton and Larry Summers, former Treasury secretary and president of Harvard University.
“You should focus on Clinton,” the president told reporters. “It must focus on Harvard president, former Harvard president. He must focus on some of the types of coverage funds.”
“I’ll give you a list. These boys lived with Jeffrey Epstein. I’m sure he didn’t,” Trump said.
When asked if he was considering giving Maxwell a forgiveness or traveling his sentence, Trump said: “It is something I have not thought about.”
“I’m allowed to do it,” he added.
Mimi Rocah, former federal prosecutor in New York, said he believes that Maurene Comment Compiore, a main prosecutor in the case of Maxwell and the daughter of former FBI director James Comment, was an effort to give those named to Trump the total control of Maxwell’s case, limit the transparency and dissident of silence.
“That does not seem coincidence. They seems that Maurene was not present in the Department of Justice,” Rocah said. “To be able to say, ‘what the hell, you can’t talk to my client or my defendant.'”
Rocah, a Democrat who served as Westchester County District from 2020 to 2024, criticized Blanche meetings with Maxwell, saying that his apparent failure in including a prosecutor with a deep knowledge of his crimes was unfair to the victims of Epstein.
“The head of all that institution who is supposed to protect the victims is to talk to her, giving her a platform to say that God knows what, without much to verify it or not,” Rocah said. “The royal people who could prove their truth are the people who worked in the case, not in Todd.”
