BBC News, New York
Getty ImagesA senior US justice department official says he will resume his questioning of Jeffrey Epstein’s long-time associate Ghislaine Maxwell on Friday – after a first meeting on Thursday that was described as “very productive” by Maxwell’s lawyer.
Pressure has been growing on US President Donald Trump’s officials to release files related to Epstein, the late convicted paedophile financier, after pledges made by Trump on the campaign trail last year.
Interest has recently switched back to Maxwell, 63, who helped Epstein abuse young girls.
In his latest comments, Trump suggested the renewed focus on Epstein was the result of an effort by opposition Democrats to distract from his achievements in office.
Maxwell’s meeting with US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche took place in Tallahassee, Florida, where she is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking.
Her lawyer 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.”
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.”
In a short post on X, Blanche wrote: “Today, I met with Ghislaine Maxwell, and I will continue my interview of her tomorrow. The Department of Justice will share additional information about what we learned at the appropriate time.”
Blanche said earlier this week that he planned to speak to Maxwell about any information she had on other people who might have been helped by Epstein to sexually abuse girls.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat and fierce Trump critic, took issue with the fact that Trump sent Blanche, his former personal lawyer turned federal prosecutor, to interview Maxwell ahead of her potential public testimony.
“The conflict of interest is glaring. It stinks of high corruption,” he said on X.
In a post on Truth Social late on Thursday, Trump said the renewed focus on Epstein was a “SCAM” and a “Democrat CON JOB”, and accused Schumer’s party of trying to “distract and obfuscate” from the achievements of the first six months of his second term in office.
Calls have recently intensified from the US public – including Trump’s loyal supporters – and lawmakers for the justice department to release files related to the Epstein matter.
On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi informed Trump during a May briefing that his name appeared in justice department documents related to Epstein.
Trump and Epstein were friends before, according to the president, they fell out in the early 2000s.
The White House pushed back, dismissing the WSJ story as “fake news”.
But an unnamed White House official told the Reuters news agency they were not denying that Trump’s name appears in the documents.
The official pointed to Epstein files disclosed months earlier by the justice department that had included Trump.
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.
Maxwell’s lawyer, Markus, previously 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.