Maxwell attorney says he hasn’t spoken about pardon with Trump team
An attorney for Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex offender and associate of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, said he has not talked to President Trump’s team about a potential pardon for his client.
“We’re going to take one day at a time. I know that’s very cliche, but it’s true, because things are happening so quickly,” Maxwell’s attorney David Oscar Markus told reporters Friday after he and Maxwell met for the second day in a row with Justice Department (DOJ) officials.
“We haven’t spoken to the president or anybody about a pardon just yet,” he added. “And listen, the president this morning said he had the power to do so. We hope he exercises that power in the right and just way.”
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche spoke with Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence, in Tallahassee, Fla. The first meeting, which lasted for more than five hours, was Thursday.
Oscar Markus, the lawyer, said earlier Friday that Maxwell completed a “thorough, comprehensive” interview with Blanche.
“No person and no topic were off-limits. We are very grateful. The truth will come out,” the attorney said in a statement.
Blanche has not commented about the Friday meeting with Maxwell.
Trump said Friday morning that he has not thought about pardoning Maxwell, who is appealing her case to the Supreme Court.
“It’s something I haven’t thought about it. I’m allowed to do it, but it’s something I have not thought about,” the president said.
“I certainly can’t talk about pardons,” he later added.
Blanche’s second day of interviews with Maxwell comes as the administration has faced immense pressure from Trump’s base and political opponents to release more documents regarding Epstein’s case.
The president suggested the media turn its sights on others, including former President Clinton, who have been linked to Epstein as well as former President Obama, who has made the news in recent days after the administration’s release of intelligence relating to Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“And people should really focus on how well the country’s doing, or they should focus on the fact that Barack Hussein Obama led a coup, or they should focus on the fact that [former Treasury Secretary] Larry Summers from Harvard, that [former President] Bill Clinton, who you know very well, and lots of other friends, really close friends of Jeffrey [Epstein] should be spoken about,” Trump said.
“They don’t talk about them, they talk about me,” he added. “I have nothing to do with the guy.”
Trump also insisted that he had never gone to Epstein’s private island.
Epstein died by suicide in 2019 in jail while awaiting trial, the medical examiner at the time found. The cause of his death was reaffirmed in a joint FBI and DOJ memo from earlier this month, which also added that the disgraced financier did not keep a so-called client list.