Convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell’s legal team has suggested she may seek a pardon as the Trump administration tries to mitigate the ongoing crisis surrounding Jeffrey Epstein.
After meeting for a second day with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Maxwell’s lawyer David Markus also told reporters his client spoke with Blanche about “100 different people” related to the case.
And while “we haven’t spoken to the president or anybody about a pardon just yet,“ Markus said, “the president this morning said he has the power to do so.”
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“We hope he exercises that power in the right and just way,” he added.
Maxwell was convicted in 2021 on federal charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy for helping Epstein, her former boyfriend, recruit and abuse underage girls.
She was sentenced to 20 years in prison, but has been trying to overturn her conviction since, something that the Department of Justice opposed only a few weeks ago when it told the Supreme Court to ignore her request.
This week, however, as the firestorm surrounding the Epstein files has become a political headache for Trump, administration officials met with her twice, hoping she would help the president stave off the crisis.
Earlier on Friday, Trump also signaled that he could consider granting Maxwell a pardon or clemency, telling reporters: “I’m allowed to do it, but it’s something I have not thought about.”
Later that day, as he landed in Scotland on a trip mostly to visit his golf courses, the president was asked what he hoped Blanche would get out of the talks with Maxwell.
“I really have nothing to say about it,” he said. “I don’t know anything about the conversation, I haven’t really been following it. A lot of people are asking me about pardons. This is not time to be talking about pardons.”
Asked if he was ever briefed about his name being in the Epstein files - which the Wall Street Journal reported happened in May - he replied: “No. I was never, never briefed, no.”
Pardoning Maxwell would risk infuriating the president’s MAGA base, and Republicans more broadly, many of whom loathe the convicted felon for her role in assisting Epstein’s heinous crimes.
“If you want justice for Jeffrey Epstein, if you are outraged over the behavior he engaged in, you should be equally outraged over Ghislaine Maxwell‘s behavior,” former Trump White House aide Alyssa Farah Griffin told CNN on Friday.
“There‘s a special place in hell for women who would help men abuse younger women.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Justice Department has so far been tight-lipped about their meetings with Maxwell, or whether they might share any information gleaned from the discussion.
But deploying Blanche to conduct the meeting was a significant shift for the administration, merely weeks after it issued a memo declaring there was no further incriminating evidence regarding the crimes or death of Epstein.
Insiders say the aim was twofold: to see if Maxwell has “credible evidence” that could shed light on Epstein’s networks, but also to “get ahead” of the issue after a Congressional committee voted to subpoena her.
“The Department of Justice will share additional information about what we learned at the appropriate time,” Blanche said in a Thursday evening post on X.
However, many question if Maxwell can be trusted to tell the truth, given the 63-year-old former socialite was also charged with perjury as part of the sex trafficking crimes for which she was convicted.
Prosecutors had alleged that Maxwell lied when she said she was not aware of Epstein’s efforts to recruit underage girls for sex.
But Maxwell’s lawyer said that his client was essentially a scapegoat, “and we’re grateful for this opportunity to tell what really happened.”
“She has been treated unfairly for over five years now. If you look up scapegoat in the dictionary, her face would be next to it,” he said.
