Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche will meet with convicted sex trafficker and Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell in the next several days, Attorney General Pam Bondi said Tuesday morning.
Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking in 2021 for recruiting and grooming multiple teenage girls for over a decade to be sexually abused by Epstein. She was investigated and indicted during the first Trump administration and tried and convicted during the Biden administration.
The meeting was confirmed by Maxwell’s attorney, David Oscar Markus, who has been requesting meetings with Trump administration officials and has suggested that Maxwell should be freed.
“I can confirm that we are in discussions with the government and that Ghislaine will always testify truthfully,” Markus said. “We are grateful to President Trump for his commitment to uncovering the truth in this case.”
NBC News has reported that Maxwell did not ask for a plea agreement and was not offered one leading up to her trial, according to statements made by federal prosecutors in pre-trial hearings at the time. After being convicted in a trial in New York, she was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.
Blanche, in a post Tuesday on X issued by Bondi, said the Justice Department stood by its July 6 statement that “no evidence was uncovered” that other individuals should be charged in the Epstein case. He said the statement “remains as accurate today as it was when it was written.”
Trump supporters criticized the statement, citing repeated promises from Bondi that she would release documents related to the Epstein case. Multiple Republican members of Congress and right-wing influencers have also criticized Bondi, whom Trump has defended.
The uproar over the so-called Epstein files has proven to be one of the largest political challenges of the initial months of Trump’s second term. The president has repeatedly called on his supporters to move on and focus on other topics, and at one point called them “stupid.”
Blanche appeared to criticize the work of prosecutors overseen by Attorney General Bill Barr during the investigation and indictment of Epstein and Maxwell during Trump’s first term. And the work of prosecutors overseen by Attorney General Merrick Garland who prosecuted and convicted Maxwell during the Biden administration.
“Until now, no administration on behalf of the Department had inquired about her willingness to meet with the government,” Blanche said on X. “That changes now.”
He also said, “This Department of Justice does not shy away from uncomfortable truths, nor from the responsibility to pursue justice wherever the facts may lead.”
Maxwell was found guilty on Dec. 29, 2021, of conspiracy to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts; conspiracy to transport minors to participate in illegal sex acts; transporting a minor to participate in illegal sex acts; sex trafficking conspiracy; and sex trafficking of a minor.
She has appealed her conviction and is serving her 20-year sentence at a federal prison in Florida.
On Monday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., continued to criticize Trump’s handling of the Epstein case.
“If you tell the base of people, who support you, of deep state treasonous crimes, election interference, blackmail, and rich powerful elite evil cabals, then you must take down every enemy of The People,” Greene said in a social media post. “If not. The base will turn and there’s no going back.
“Dangling bits of red meat no longer satisfies,” she added. “They want the whole steak dinner and will accept nothing else.”
