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Convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime confidant of late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, was spotted holding a mysterious box as she returned to her Florida prison after meeting with a top U.S. Department of Justice official on Thursday (July 24) in drone footage captured by WCTV.
Maxwell, 63, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking young girls to Epstein, was handcuffed in the front and led through a barbed-wire fence, with one officer carrying the behind behind her as she entered the facility. The disgraced former socialite and her lawyer met with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche at his Tallahassee officer earlier on Thursday, sources with knowledge of the situation confirmed to the New York Post.
Blanche also confirmed the meeting, which he said would continue the following day.
"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 wrote on his X account.
Maxwell reportedly answered questions "honestly," according to Blanche, who had previously worked as President Donald Trump's defense attorney.
Maxwell, who served as Epstein's madam, had never previously gave her version of events of the late convicted pedophile's incidents prior to her own trial, which resulted in a 20-year sentencing for recruiting women and underage girls for the financier to sexually abuse, having also never testified in her own defense. On Tuesday (July 22), Alan Dershowitz, a lawyer and law professor who was friends with and had previously represented Epstein, claimed that Maxwell would attempt to cut a deal with federal authorities in their investigation into Epstein and individuals who may have participated in Epstein's criminal enterprise.
“She’s going to make a deal,” Dershowitz told the New York Post. “That’s the way things are done. They make deals with the Mafia, so I’m certain they are going to try to make a deal with her.”
Another legal expert claimed that the meeting with Blanche would give Maxwell the opportunity to possibly lessen her sentence or be released from prison if she was willing to give new details about her and Epstein's lives, having closely guarded them since his death in 2019.
Maxwell was found guilty of child sex trafficking and other offenses connected to Epstein in 2021. The decision to reach out to her followed scrutiny toward Trump's administration for not releasing more information about the Epstein files, which led to Trump publicly directing Bondi to release "pertinent" grand jury testimony.
On July 16, Quinnipiac University released a poll showing a majority of Americans (63%) disapproved how Trump and his administration had handled the Epstein files. Podcaster Joe Rogan, who staunchly supported Trump in the 2024 presidential election, criticized the administration's announcement claiming there was never a list or footage revealing Epstein's alleged clients, which was a talking point of conservative pundits for years.
“They’ve got videotape and all [of] a sudden they don’t,” Rogan said on the episode of his Joe Rogan Experience podcast released on Tuesday (July 15).
“You had the director of the FBI on this show saying, ‘If there was [a videotape], nothing you’re looking for is on those tapes,'” he added, referring to FBI Director Kash Patel's appearance on his podcast in June. “Like, what? Why’d they say there was thousands of hours of tapes of people doing horrible s–t? Why’d they say that? Didn’t Pam Bondi say that?"
Bondi had previously claimed that the supposed Epstein list was on her desk awaiting review months ago and told reporters that the FBI was reviewing "tens of thousands of videos" of Epstein "with children or child porn" on July 1 before the DOJ suddenly announced that there was no "Epstein list" or incriminating footage of his associates days later. President Trump spent months claiming he had plans to release everything the government had on Epstein and his alleged associates, which included releasing The Epstein Files: Phase 1 in February, though the files revealed next to no new information.
Trump, who had been photographed alongside Epstein in the past, claimed that he never visited the financier's notorious private island where numerous underage girls and young women were sexually abused, but claimed "a lot of people did."