Jeffrey Epstein secrets: Donald Trump rattled as Ghislaine Maxwell tells all

The US Deputy Attorney-General has grilled Ghislaine Maxwell, the imprisoned accomplice of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as Donald Trump struggles to placate supporters.

British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell and US financier Jeffrey Epstein in an undated trial evidence image obtained in 2021 from the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. Picture via AFP

The US Deputy Attorney-General has spent hours grilling Ghislaine Maxwell, the imprisoned accomplice of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as Donald Trump struggles to placate supporters furious over his handling of the case.

David Markus, Maxwell’s lawyer, said the former British socialite answered every question she was asked during a day-long meeting at a courthouse in Tallahassee, Florida.

“She never invoked a privilege. She never declined to answer,” Mr Markus said. “She answered all the questions truthfully, honestly, and to the best of her ability.”

Deputy Attorney-General Todd Blanche said he would continue interviewing Maxwell on Friday (Saturday AEST) and “share additional information about what we learned at the ­appropriate time”.

Mr Markus said he was not going to comment on the “substance” of the meeting with Mr Blanche, Mr Trump’s personal lawyer during the Stormy Daniels hush money trial.

Maxwell, 63, is serving a 20-year sentence after being convicted in 2021 of recruiting underage girls for Epstein, who died in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking.

Earlier this week, Mr Blanche said if Maxwell has “information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the DOJ will hear what she has to say”.

Ghislaine Maxwell in prison. Picture: supplied

Mr Trump was once a close friend of Epstein and The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that the President’s name was among hundreds found during a Department of Justice ­review of the so-called “Epstein files”. Mr Trump filed a $US10bn defamation suit against the Journal last week after it reported that he had written a sexually suggestive letter to Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003

The interview with Maxwell came as Republicans warned Mr Trump not to commute her sentence. On Thursday night, three Republican rebels voted with Democrats to subpoena the ­Epstein files as suspicions linger within the MAGA movement over the circumstances of the pedophile financier’s death.

David Markus, lawyer for Ghislaine Maxwell, speaks to media on Thursday US time. (AP Photo/John Raoux

Deputy Attorney-General Todd Blanche, when he was a lawyer for Donald Trump last year. Picture: pool/AFP

The subpoena requires the DoJ to release the files with the names of victims redacted. The House oversight committee, which voted for the release, also subpoenaed Maxwell for a deposition in Tallahassee on August 11.

James Comer, the Republican chair of the committee, warned Mr Trump on CNN that any pardon or immunity deal for Maxwell should be “off the table”.

An appeals court last year ­upheld Maxwell’s conviction. She is now mounting a long-shot bid at the Supreme Court.

The Trump administration has faced weeks of criticism since the Justice Department announced it wouldn’t release any more ­material from its investigative files on Epstein, saying there was no smoking-gun list of other powerful people who sexually abused the young women and girls he trafficked.

Mr Trump has faced mounting pressure from his own supporters to release the files. In recent weeks he has described those supporters as “stupid” and “weaklings” for demanding transparency.

He has faced questions over his own links to Epstein. The allegation that Mr Trump’s name ­appears in the Epstein files was first made by Elon Musk in a post on X during the tech billionaire’s explosive falling out with the President earlier this year. Mr Musk later deleted the post.

The White House has dismissed as “fake news” reports that Mr Trump was told by Pam Bondi, the Attorney-General, that his name appeared in the ­Epstein files.

In a further sign of Republican unease about the Epstein files, the Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, contradicted Mr Trump’s claims that the case was a “hoax”. “It’s not a hoax,” he told CBS News. “Of course not.”

Several Trump-appointed officials campaigned for the release of the files before entering government, including Kash Patel, director of the FBI, and Dan Bongino, his deputy director.

Mr Trump and Epstein were friends during the 1990s and 2000s, when the US President flew seven times in the financier’s private jet and entertained him at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate. Mr Trump has denied any wrongdoing.

THE TIMES, AFP