By Julia Bonavita. Media: Fox News
U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has concluded his interview with Ghislaine Maxwell after a second day of talks about her involvement in Jeffrey Epstein’s years of sex crimes.
“Ghislaine answered every single question asked of her over the last day and a half,” Maxwell’s attorney, David Oscar Markus, told reporters outside the federal courthouse in Tallahassee Friday. “She answered those questions honestly, truthfully and to the best of her ability. She never invoked a privilege, she never refused to answer a question.
“She didn’t get a fair trial. We’re still appealing to the Supreme Court,” he added. “Remember, people have questioned her honesty, which I think is just wrong.
“We don’t know how it’s going to play out,” he said. “The truth will come out about what happened with Mr. Epstein.”
Discussing next steps, Markus said no offers have been made to Maxwell, but he weighed in on the possibility of President Donald Trump pardoning his client.
“We haven’t spoken to the president or anybody about a pardon just yet,” Markus said. “The president this morning said he had the power to do so. We hope he exercises that power in the right and just way.”
When speaking to reporters outside the White House Friday, Trump did not rule out a pardon or clemency for Maxwell.
“It’s something I haven’t thought about,” Trump said. “I’m allowed to do it, but it’s something I have not thought about.”
The DOJ did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
The second day of talks came the same week a congressional committee voted to subpoena Maxwell to provide additional testimony about Epstein’s crimes and is the first time she has met with federal officials in what her attorney called a “very productive day.”
“We just ask that the [officials] look at what she has to say with an open mind,” Markus told reporters ahead of the meeting Friday morning.
“She [has] no reason to lie at this point, and she’s going to keep telling the truth.”
In addition to Maxwell’s newly signed congressional subpoena, she is awaiting a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court on whether the justices will take up an appeal from her legal team to overturn her 2021 conviction, according to The Associated Press.
Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison after a New York jury found her guilty of five federal charges, including sex trafficking of a minor.
While speaking to Lawrence Jones on “Fox & Friends” Friday, George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley pointed to three key possibilities for Maxwell’s meetings with federal officials.
Turley referenced a motion that could be filed by the DOJ to reduce a sentence for a key witness in a case.
“The defense can also go to a court and ask for a reduction based on new evidence,” Turley said. “But we haven’t seen that.”
Turley also suggested Trump could commute Maxwell’s sentence toward the end of his term “if she is a highly cooperative witness.”
Maxwell’s legal team is arguing that her previous conviction was invalid due to a plea agreement Epstein made with federal prosecutors in his 2007 Florida case that should have also protected his associates and prevented her from being prosecuted in New York.
Her attorneys are planning to file their final written brief to the court on Monday, according to Markus.
Maxwell is also reportedly compiling new evidence in a bid to prove alleged government misconduct stemming from her 2021 trial to hand over to the DOJ, her brother, Ian Maxwell, previously confirmed to Fox News Digital.
“Clearly, we must now see how this plays out,” he said.
“She will be putting before that court material new evidence that was not available to the defense at her 2021 trial, which would have had a significant impact on its outcome,” he told the New York Post.
Maxwell never testified during her 2021 trial and did not provide her version of events to federal prosecutors in the investigation leading up to the proceedings.
Earlier this week, a federal judge in Florida denied the Trump administration’s request to unseal transcripts from grand jury investigations pertaining to Epstein.
A similar request from Maxwell was also denied, with the judge saying it was a “black-letter law” that defendants are unable to access grand jury information.
Earlier this year, Attorney General Pam Bondi told “America Reports” host John Roberts she was in possession of Epstein’s “client list.”
In 2008, Epstein reached a deal with prosecutors to avoid more serious charges by pleading guilty to state charges of procuring a person under 18 for prostitution and solicitation of prostitution. One month after his 2019 arrest, the disgraced financier was found dead in his New York City jail cell in what authorities ruled a suicide.
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