SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
Justice Department officials will be continuing to interview Ghislaine Maxwell today in Florida.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
That's where the longtime associate of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking. After a first round of interviews with Justice Department officials Thursday, Maxwell's lawyer, David Markus, spoke to reporters.
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DAVID MARKUS: Miss Maxwell answered every single question. She never stopped. She never invoked a privilege. She never declined to answer. She answered all the questions truthfully, honestly and to the best of her ability.
MARTIN: The interview comes as the Trump administration is facing pressure, including from some of the president's fiercest supporters, to release more documents from the Epstein case.
PFEIFFER: The Justice Department official who's interviewing Maxwell is Todd Blanche, Trump's former personal lawyer, who is now the second-highest-ranking official at DOJ.
ELLIOT WILLIAMS: It is pretty remarkable that someone as senior as the deputy attorney general is taking an individual meeting like this.
PFEIFFER: That's Elliot Williams, a former deputy assistant attorney general who served in the Justice Department during the Obama administration. He says inmate interviews like this are typically conducted by prosecutors far more junior than Blanche.
WILLIAMS: You know, maybe even people a few years out of law school. There's no reason why someone more junior couldn't have done it, but it's indicative of how important this issue really is to the White House.
MARTIN: Blanche's direct involvement raises a key question. His boss, Attorney General Pam Bondi, herself a former Trump lawyer, reportedly told the president in May that his name appeared in the Epstein files, in a breach of the attorney general's independence. Would Blanche similarly tip off Trump? Stephen Gillers is a legal ethics expert at the NYU School of Law and says it's safe to assume Blanche will debrief Trump. He also believes the Justice Department should assign a career prosecutor to question Maxwell, who likely has her own motivations at play.
STEPHEN GILLERS: Maxwell, talking to Blanche, knows that whatever she says will be shared with the president. And remember, the president can let her out of prison tomorrow if he's happy with her responses. And so even without the appearance of Blanche, the conversation between Maxwell and an intermediary who will report to the president has some credibility problems.
PFEIFFER: Those credibility problems could follow lawmakers home as they return to their districts for summer recess. Many of them are preparing to face questions from constituents about the Epstein files in upcoming town halls. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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