WASHINGTON – The top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Richard Durbin, asked the Justice Department on July 28 for all recordings of its two days of interviews with Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein who is now at the center of a public furor over unreleased DOJ investigative files into a child sex trafficking ring allegedly headed by the two.
Durbin, D-Ill., sought all recordings and related transcripts in a letter to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the former Trump personal defense lawyer who conducted the interviews with Maxwell last week in Tallahassee, Fla., near where she is serving a 20-year prison sentence related to the trafficking ring.
The letter was co-signed by fellow Judiciary Committee member Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, the former top federal prosecutor in Rhode Island and state attorney general.
The senators also demanded that the Justice Department commit to offering no pardon or reduction of Maxwell’s sentence in exchange for information she provides, citing “serious questions about the potential for a corrupt bargain between the Trump Administration and Ghislaine Maxwell.”
“What does the Justice Department want out of Ghislaine Maxwell? She’s a proven liar and sex trafficker. The timing of her meeting with Deputy Attorney General Blanche doesn’t pass the sniff test,” according to a social media post with the letter by the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has oversight of the DOJ. “They’re on notice—no political games here.”
