Amid furor over Epstein ties, Trump DOJ officials seek meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell

Molly Crane-Newman, New York Daily News on Jul 22, 2025

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Amid a ballooning scandal involving the government’s knowledge about Jeffrey Epstein and his ties to President Donald Trump, Justice Department officials on Tuesday claimed they were eager to speak with the deceased financier’s imprisoned right-hand woman, Ghislaine Maxwell.

In a statement on X, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said he had reached out to Maxwell’s lawyers on the orders of Attorney General Pam Bondi, marking “the first time” that the DOJ has done so.

It’s unclear what information Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, can learn from Maxwell that the feds who investigated her and Epstein don’t already know.

The headline-grabbing invite comes as Trump and his top administration officials are battling public backlash following a July 6 memo by the DOJ and FBI that claimed the remaining case files on the well-connected wealth manager maintained by the government did not include details about his coconspirators and reiterated findings that he died by suicide in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019.

The announcement enraged MAGA followers, given that Trump and his top officials, including FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, had long promoted a supposed “client list” of powerful people who engaged in Epstein’s child sex trafficking ring and other conspiracy theories about Epstein’s cause of death.

“The joint statement by the DOJ and FBI of July 6 remains as accurate today as it was when it was written,” Blanche’s Tuesday statement reads. “Namely, that in the recent thorough review of the files maintained by the FBI in the Epstein case, no evidence was uncovered that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.

“President Trump has told us to release all credible evidence. If [Ghislaine] Maxwell has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the DOJ will hear what she has to say.”

Blanche’s invite to Maxwell also follows explosive reporting in the Wall Street Journal about Trump allegedly signing Epstein’s 50th birthday book in 2003 with a “bawdy” drawing of a naked woman. Trump has denied the report — claiming, “I never wrote a picture in my life” — and sued the newspaper owned by his longtime ally Rupert Murdoch.

Maxwell, 63, is currently serving out a 20-year sentence at FCI Tallahassee in Florida following her December 2021 conviction on sex trafficking charges for procuring teenage girls and young women for Epstein to abuse for at least a decade starting in 1994.

The former British socialite, daughter of the late, disgraced billionaire publisher Robert Maxwell, is trying to get out of prison.

She has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review her conviction, arguing that she should have been protected from prosecution based on the sweetheart deal the feds in Florida afforded Epstein in 2007. The deal allowed Epstein to plead guilty to low-level state prostitution charges for soliciting a 14-year-old girl for sex in exchange for a brief stint in a county jail and a promise not to prosecute him or his coconspirators.

Trump’s DOJ has asked the nation’s high court to reject the appeal, arguing that the agreement only covered Epstein and his accomplices in South Florida.

Maxwell’s lawyers could not immediately be reached for comment.

Trump, who was friendly with Epstein for years, has reacted strongly to the public’s fixation on the financier and his relationship with him, going so far as to criticize those he called “past supporters” as gullible believers of a supposed “Epstein HOAX” he now claims was orchestrated by the Democrats.

“It’s pretty boring stuff. It’s sordid, but it’s boring, and I don’t understand why it keeps going,” Trump said of the Epstein files last week.“I think really only pretty bad people, including fake news, want to keep something like that going.”

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