Todd Blanche, the acting US attorney general, told lawmakers on Tuesday that he would not recommend a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex-trafficking crimes. Blanche’s comments came during a Senate hearing on Tuesday, where he was testifying before the appropriations subcommittee over budget requests for the justice department.
During one exchange, Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, asked Blanche whether the justice department, and he as the acting attorney general, could commit to not recommending a pardon for Maxwell. “Yes, I can commit to that, of course,” Blanche, who is a former personal lawyer for Trump, responded.
The statement comes as Maxwell exhausted a series of appeals of her conviction, with the US supreme court in October declining to hear her petition. Earlier this year, Maxwell appeared before the House oversight and reform committee but invoked her fifth amendment right and refused to answer the panel’s questions.
Her attorney told lawmakers that she would only speak if granted clemency. And in April, reports emerged that members of the committee were divided over whether Trump should consider pardoning Maxwell in exchange for her cooperation in the panel’s Epstein investigation.
Last year, as the Trump administration faced growing pressure to release more documents related to the Epstein investigation, it dispatched Blanche, who was deputy attorney general at the time, to interview Maxwell about the Epstein case. The interview, conducted over two days in July, was followed by the justice department releasing the transcripts and audio recordings.