A senior justice department official met Jeffrey Epstein’s long-time associate Ghislaine Maxwell on Thursday as pressure grows on the Trump administration to release files linked to the disgraced financier’s sex trafficking network.
The meeting took place in Tallahassee, Florida, where Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking.
An attorney for Maxwell, David Markus, told the BBC’s US partner CBS News that he would not comment on the “substance” of the discussions but said “there were a lot of questions and we went all day”.
“She answered every one of them,” he said. “She never did say I’m not going to answer, never declined.”
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche had said earlier this week that he planned to speak to Maxwell about any information she had on other people whom Epstein may have helped sexually abuse girls.
After meeting Maxwell, Blanche wrote on X that he would continue his interview with her on Friday and share additional information “at the appropriate time”.
Mr Markus told reporters he was “thankful” that Blanche had come to ask Maxwell questions.
“It’s the first time the government did it. So it was a good day,” he said.
The latest developments come as interest has switched back to Ghislaine Maxwell, 63, a convicted sex-trafficker in prison for helping Epstein abuse young girls.
Calls have grown from the public – including President Donald Trump’s loyal supporters – and lawmakers for the justice department to release files related to the Epstein case.
On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi informed Trump during a May briefing that his name appeared in DOJ documents related to the Epstein case.
The White House has pushed back dismissing the story as “fake news”.
Being named in the documents is not evidence of any criminal activity, nor has Trump ever been accused of wrongdoing in connection with the Epstein case.
While campaigning for the presidency last year, Trump had promised to release such files about the well-connected sex offender.
But his supporters have since grown frustrated with the administration’s handling of the issue, including its failure to deliver a rumoured “client list” of Epstein. In a memo earlier this month, the justice department and FBI said there was no such list.
Epstein died in a New York prison cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, following an earlier conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor. His death was ruled a suicide.
In the years since, conspiracy theories about the nature of his crimes and his death itself have proliferated.
On Wednesday, a sub-committee of the US House of Representatives voted to subpoena the justice department for the files, which must be signed off by the committee chairman.
Republicans on the House Oversight Committee have also subpoenaed Maxwell to testify before the panel remotely from prison on 11 August.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has warned that Maxwell – who for years helped Epstein groom and sexually abuse girls – cannot be trusted to provide accurate testimony.
Her attorney, David Oscar Markus, told the BBC the concerns were “unfounded” and that if she chose to testify, rather than invoke her constitutional right to remain silent, “she would testify truthfully, as she always has said she would”.
Last week, the justice department asked a federal judge to release years-old grand jury testimony related to a 2006 Florida investigation into Epstein, but a federal judge in the state on Wednesday declined to make the documents public.
