President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House, in Washington, on his way to Turnberry, Scotland, July 25, 2025.
Jim Watson | Afp | Getty Images
Convicted Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell “was asked maybe about 100 different people” during a meeting with a top Department of Justice official in Florida on Friday, her lawyer said.
“I think Ghislaine did a wonderful job,” her attorney, David Oscar Markus, told reporters outside U.S. District Court in Tallahassee, where Maxwell met for the second day in a row with Deputy Attorney Todd Blanche.
“She literally answered every question. She didn’t say, You know what? Don’t ask me that. I’m not going to talk about this person,” Markus said about his client, who is serving a 20-year prison term for crimes related to procuring and grooming girls for Epstein to sexually abuse.
“She was asked maybe about 100 different people. 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,” he said.
Markus did not identify the people Maxwell was asked about.
Ghislaine Maxwell, longtime associate of accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, speaks at a news conference on oceans and sustainable development at the United Nations in New York, June 25, 2013 in this screengrab taken from United Nations TV file footage.
UNTV | Reuters
Earlier Friday, President Donald Trump deflected questions about his former friend Epstein, who died from a jailhouse suicide weeks after being arrested on child sex trafficking charges in July 2019.
“I have nothing to do with the guy,” Trump said of Epstein, with whom he had socialized for years before falling out with the now-dead pedophile in the mid-2000s.
Trump instead said people should focus on others who, like him, had previously socialized with Epstein, among them former President Bill Clinton and ex-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who also served as president of Harvard University.
People “don’t talk about them. They talk about me,” Trump griped before departing for a trip to Scotland.
“You should focus on Clinton. You should focus on the president of Harvard, the former president of Harvard, you should focus on some of the hedge fund guys,” Trump said.
“I’ll give you a list. These guys lived with Jeffrey Epstein, I sure as hell didn’t.”
Asked if he was considering a pardon or sentence commutation for Maxwell, Trump said, “It’s something I haven’t thought about.”
“I’m allowed to do it,” he added.
Jeffrey Epstein, in a photo provided by the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office, July 27, 2006.
Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office | AP
Maxwell’s lawyer Markus, when asked by reporters about possible clemency from Trump in exchange for her cooperation with the DOJ, replied: “No offers have been made.”
Markus also said, “I am not going to comment on what we’re hoping for” from those discussions with Blanche.
The lawyer had been asked if Maxwell hoped to get some kind of deal, possibly including a recommended sentence reduction, from prosecutors.
“Ghislaine answered every single question asked of her over the last day and a half, she answered those questions honestly, truthfully, to the best of her ability,” Markus said. “She never invoked a privilege. She never refused to answer a question.”
Trump has faced growing pressure to release information about Epstein after the DOJ earlier this month reneged on promises by Attorney General Pam Bondi and top FBI officials to disclose files criminal investigators assembled in their sex trafficking probe of Epstein.
Trump last week ordered Bondi to seek the unsealing of grand jury transcripts related to investigations of Epstein and Maxwell, shortly after The Wall Street Journal reported he had sent a “bawdy” letter to Epstein in 2003 for the money manager’s 50th birthday.
“I don’t even know what they’re talking about. Now, somebody could have written a letter and used my name, but that’s happened a lot,” Trump said about the letter on Friday.
On Tuesday, Blanche said he would seek to meet Maxwell and ask her if she had information about other people who had potentially abused underage girls and young women connected to Epstein. Blanche is a former criminal defense lawyer for Trump.
Blanche met for hours with Maxwell and her attorney on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Tallahassee, the city where she is serving her prison term.
Before their second meeting, on Friday, Maxwell’s lawyer Markus told reporters, “Ghislaine has been treated unfairly for over five years now.”
“If you looked up scapegoat in the dictionary, her face would be next to the definition, next to the dictionary definition of it,” he said. “So, you know, we’re grateful for this opportunity to finally be able to say what really happened, and that’s what we’re going to do yesterday and today.”
Markus said that Maxwell has “been in terrible, awful conditions for five years. We wouldn’t keep animals the way she’s been kept in prison.”
“We just ask that folks look at what she has to say with an open mind, and that’s what Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has promised us, and everything she says can be corroborated and she’s telling the truth,” Markus said.
“She’s got no reason to lie at this point, and she’s going to keep telling the truth.”
