WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche met with accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell at the U.S. Attorney’s office in Tallahassee Florida, ABC news reported on Thursday.
Images captured by ABC News showed Blanche and his entourage, including Acting Associate Deputy Attorney General Diego Pestana, entering the U.S. Attorney’s office, which is located in a federal courthouse.
The meeting was widely anticipated, after Blanche announced earlier in the week he had reached out to Maxwell’s lawyers to see if she might have “information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims.”
At the time, he said he anticipated meeting with her “in the coming days.”
Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence at a federal prison in Tallahassee, after a jury convicted her of sex trafficking in 2021. She is appealing her sentence.
Her attorney David Oscar Markus, previously confirmed to Reuters that she was in discussions with the government.
He did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
President Donald Trump and his administration have been facing mounting pressure from Trump’s supporters to release additional information about the Justice Department’s investigation into Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 in a jail cell while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
Although Attorney General Pam Bondi earlier this year promised to release additional materials related to possible Epstein clients, the department reversed course this month and issued a memo concluding there was no basis to continue investigating and there was no evidence of a client list or blackmail.
Since then, the department has sought permission to unseal grand jury transcripts from its prior investigations into Epstein and Maxwell.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg denied one of those requests, finding that it did not fall into any of the exceptions to rules requiring grand jury material be kept secret.
Trump’s name, along with many other high-profile individuals, appeared multiple times on flight logs for Epstein’s private plane in the 1990s.
The Justice Department released some of those records that contained Trump’s name earlier this year.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
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