Trump’s Defense Attorney Todd Blanche Will Meet with Sex Trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell to Make a Deal for His Client
Trump Defense Attorney Todd Blanche and Pam Bondi just announced that Blanche will meet with Ghislaine Maxwell and discuss potential cooperation deals with her.
Statement from @DAGToddBlanche: This Department of Justice does not shy away from uncomfortable truths, nor from the responsibility to pursue justice wherever the facts may lead. The joint statement by the DOJ and FBI of July 6 remains as accurate today as it was when it was written. Namely, that in the recent thorough review of the files maintained by the FBI in the Epstein case, no evidence was uncovered that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties. President Trump has told us to release all credible evidence. If Ghislane Maxwell has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the DOJ will hear what she has to say. Therefore, at the direction of Attorney General Bondi, I have communicated with counsel for Ms. Maxwell to determine whether she would be willing to speak with prosecutors from the Department. I anticipate meeting with Ms. Maxwell in the coming days. Until now, no administration on behalf of the Department had inquired about her willingness to meet with the government. That changes now.
Justice demands courage. For the first time, the Department of Justice is reaching out to Ghislaine Maxwell to ask: what do you know? At @AGPamBondi’s direction, I’ve contacted her counsel. I intend to meet with her soon. No one is above the law—and no lead is off-limits.
So here’s what happened.
Maxwell delayed her appeal to SCOTUS until after the inauguration. Trump’s DOJ twice delayed the decision whether they were going to defend the appeal, finally filing their response on Monday.
That day, Maxwell’s defense attorney, David Markus, insinuated that Trump was reneging on a deal.
In a statement Monday, an attorney for Maxwell hinted at the swirling controversy surrounding the Trump administration’s decision not to release any further records related to investigations of Epstein.
“I’d be surprised if President Trump knew his lawyers were asking the Supreme Court to let the government break a deal. He’s the ultimate dealmaker—and I’m sure he’d agree that when the United States gives its word, it should keep it. With all the talk about who’s being prosecuted and who isn’t, it’s especially unfair that Ghislaine Maxwell remains in prison based on a promise the government made and broke,” wrote David Oscar Markus.
The next day, Tuesday, WSJ moved forward with a story implicating Trump in “daily secrets” with Jeffrey Epstein.
The following day, Wednesday, Pam Bondi fired Maurene Comey, the prosecutor who would be competent to assess any cooperation offered from Maxwell.
Friday, in a false show of transparency, Todd Blanche (filing under his defense attorney identity) moved to unseal grand jury transcripts that DOJ has in a form it could release immediately.
Meanwhile, Trump’s DNI Tulsi Gabbard created a false diversion to distract his rubes.
Yesterday, the Speaker of the House ceded his majority for a week to give Trump “space” to cover up his pedophile problem.
My belief is we need the administration to have the space to do what it is doing,
And today, Trump’s Defense Attorney Todd Blanche announces he will meet with Maxwell soon to make the kind of deal that could excuse releasing her early. Probably, he’ll ask her to implicate someone like Bill Clinton.
Absent that deal, it seems clear, the WSJ will continue to publish stories implicating the President in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking.
Update: Markus, in his Tweet about the deal, does Trump a real solid by suggesting Trump is taking action to “uncover the truth.”
I can confirm that we are in discussions with the government and that Ghislaine will always testify truthfully. We are grateful to President Trump for his commitment to uncovering the truth in this case.” David Oscar Markus We have no other comment at this time.
Update: Oversight just agreed to subpoena Maxwell for a deposition in a voice vote. This could complicate Blanche’s plans.
Timeline:
February 16, 2017: Alex Acosta nominated Secretary of Labor.
July 2, 2019: Jeffrey Epstein indicted.
July 12, 2019: Alex Acosta resigns.
August 10, 2019: Epstein dies by suicide.
June 20, 2020: Geoffrey Berman fired.
June 29, 2020: Ghislaine Maxwell indicted.
March 29, 2021: Superseding indictment.
November 16, 2021: Jury selection begins.
December 29, 2021: Maxwell convicted on 5 of 6 counts.
February 28, 2023: Maxwell appeals.
September 17, 2024: Second Circuit rejects appeal.
January 15, 2025: Maxwell delays appeal.
February 10, 2025: Dan Bongino promises he’ll never let Epstein story go.
February 21, 2025: Pam Bondi claims Epstein client list is on her desk.
February 27, 2025: Bondi orchestrates re-release of previously released Epstein files.
March 4, 2025: James Dennehy forced to retire.
March 14, 2025: Pam Bondi conducts emergency review of Epstein and Maxwell documents.
April 10, 2025: Maxwell files cert petition.
May 7, 2025: John Sauer delays response; Bondi claims there are thousands of videos.
May 18, 2025: Kash Patel and Dan Bongino affirm that Epstein killed himself.
May 22, 2025: Epstein prison video created.
June 6, 2025: John Sauer delays response.
July 7, 2025: Pam Bondi claims there’s no there there.
July 8, 2025: Trump loses it over questions about Epstein.
July 12, 2025: Trump attempts to claim Epstein is a Democratic plot.
July 14, 2025: DOJ defends Maxwell prosecution; David Markus suggests Trump is reneging on a deal.
July 15, 2025: WSJ interviews Trump about Epstein book.
July 16, 2025: Pam Bondi fires Maurene Comey, on Trump’s personal authority.
July 17, 2025: Trump yells at supporters who won’t move on from Epstein. WSJ publishes story.
July 18, 2025: Todd Blanche files to unseal grand jury materials; Trump sues WSJ.
July 21, 2025: Mike Johnson dodges week of work to give Trump “space” to fix his Epstein problem.
July 22, 2025: Blanche announces he’ll meet with Maxwell; Oversight votes to subpoena Maxwell for deposition.
Your timelines always bring such damning clarity to the topic at hand. Can Maurene Comey speak freely as a fired former prosecutor?
BTW the phrase ‘enigmas never age’ makes me ponder whether Trump knew about Epstein’s egg-shaped penis and also about the age of girls Epstein would place on top of it: An egg ma?
https://www.oxygen.com/true-crime-buzz/why-did-spencer-kuvin-ask-jeffrey-epstein-if-he-had-egg-shaped-penis
No way will Comey speak freely.
She knows they’ll throw the book at her faster than anyone can run or fly.
Not certain, but I believe as a prosecutor, she has an affirmative duty not to talk about her cases in public, and if she does – as in writing a book, as Berman did – DOJ has to vet the publication.
“I believe as a prosecutor, she has an affirmative duty not to talk about her cases in public”
Are you implying that Habba, Bondi, etc. did something ethically wrong and/or illegal when they spoke of the Baraka, McIver, Abrego Garcia, Dugan cases?
ENIGMA = GAMINES. reportedly pedophile code
I think you want to double check your spelling. Also a link to sources about the alleged code would be nice; I don’t want this site to be referred to as the source of that coded language when it’s from someplace else.
I am certain whatever “evidence” that comes of this will implicate anyone but Trump. We are watching them cover it all up in real time.
Thanks for laying this all out. Yeah, it looks like he’s going to give Maxwell a deal if she can give something “credible”, code word for red meat for his base.
There’s a new article today by Zev Shalev at Narativ. Explains Trump and Epstein’s history and proximity to Iran Contra.
Including Trump and Maxwell senior.
Zev lays out a case for Epstein, via Maxwell and Iran-Contra arms trading, to have taken over a $600 million off shore CIA slush fund.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250722125743/https://www.narativ.org/p/the-greatest-heist-how-reagans-shadow
Laid out like this, it looks like Trump’s DoJ violated the Prisoner’s Dilemma by announcing it was violating the Prisoner’s Dilemma. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
In response, Maxwell made some noise by proxy in WSJ.
Trump realized he was in trouble, but isn’t he caught in a trap of his own making? If he drops the appeal, he’s an elitist Deep State liberal elite cabal member protecting other pedophiles. If he doesn’t drop the appeal, more stories get written. If he accepts her “plea offer” he needs to come up with names, trials, and convictions, or he’s again an elitist Deep State liberal elite cabal member protecting other pedophiles because he let her go AND failed to use anything she gave.
And that’s to say nothing about the 1000 FBI personnel, Maurene Comey, and others that could be waiting in the weeds.
So this resembles more and bad flailing.
Or am I missing anything?
The DOJ paperwork.
Trump may proudly not use email, but every one else in the government does. Trump may not like things written down, but the DOJ lives by its documents.
Whatever Trump decides to do, it cannot conflict with the written records at DOJ — which brings us back to Marurene Comey et al. — and Murdoch’s empire knows this.
As part of the WSJ reporters prepping to run their article, I suspect the WSJ lawyers were simultaneously prepping their legal strategy for the inevitable lawsuit from Trump. Central to that would be preparing a list of discovery questions for Trump and documents to be produced. Anyone who has watched Trump providing a deposition knows he is . . . not good at it. Additional depositions with folks like M Comey would be hugely important in highlighting the documentary trail.
Conflicts between Trump’s answers and DOJ records will be legion.
It would be a sin if Trump lets Maxwell off the hook to save himself and others from accountability. But sin is Donald Trump’s stock-in-trade.
Isn’t it obvious? Maxwell is Mossad, just like her dad. She’ll say whatever Bibi wants. Bibi wants Trump to stay in office because Trump won’t interfere with his genocidal plans. So Maxwell will provide “evidence” against Clinton, Obama, Biden, whomever. We will also see “evidence” from unnamed witnesses. (As ever, Dems will fall into “Me Too” self-lacerations.) Perhaps “evidence” will be attributed to the conveniently-dead Virginia Roberts.
[Welcome to emptywheel. Please choose and use a unique username with a minimum of 8 letters. We adopted this minimum standard to support community security. Because your username is too short, your username will be temporarily changed to match the date/time of your first known comment until you have a new compliant username. /~Rayne]
“Isn’t it obvious? Maxwell is Mossad, just like her dad.”
No, it’s not obvious. This ^^ is an assumption. Bring fact-based evidence. You’re new here and perhaps you’re not familiar with how this site operates, but we expect documentation to support claims.
Aileen, is that you?
Sounds to me more like Stan Woodward, who was assigned to work closely with Susie Wiles. I believe he may have made trolling comments under a different name in the past.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/ex-akin-gump-lawyer-aiding-wiles-for-trump-shutters-dc-firm
Ex-Akin Gump Lawyer Aiding Wiles for Trump Shutters DC Firm – Tatyana Monnay, 1/21/25
She needs to ask him to drink the water from the bottle he hands her before she does, and even then not to drink it.
As I posted yesterday, Michael Cohen interviews Michael Wolff about Trump and Epstein, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEKwgDjIPcQ
Some stuff there with Maxwell as well including her being out of the picture when some of the crimes were taking place.
Noted also that Wolff describes Polaroids he has seen of Trump sitting around the pool at Epstein’s house with half-clad girls on his lap, and one nastier Polaroid which I won’t describe. Wolff says that since the FBI emptied the safe in which Epstein kept these Polaroids as part of its investigation, said photos ought to be in the “Epstein files.” Q is: Is Wolff a credible witness? He seemed so, as he spoke, I mean.
Great story and great analysis.
I wrote my first news story in 1974 and went on to cover politics from Massachusetts to Washington and DC and was credited for assisting global industry and the U.S. to shut down a trade war with Europe.
I have told everyone that what goes up will come down eventually. And I advised many politicians to NEVER LIE if they didn’t want to eat their words. Or at least release some of the truth.
Because he basically controls Fox News news coverage and has pitiful Supreme Court justices doing his bidding — including handing him near carte blanche to do illegal things — he now has no guardrails against his insane acts. I add using Attorney General Pam Bondi as his personal lawyer. What a fool she is. She ought to read the story of George Mitchell who ended up in jail for his role of helping Nixon suppress the Watergate misdeeds.
So it is wonderful to watch all of them hoisting themselves on their own pitard. It’s a classic case of people grabbing onto a politician to boost their career and fill their coffers. They will all come down some day, and hopefully sooner than later.
Nothing is more indicative of Trump’s foolish acts than a MAGA man weeping on CNN about how Trump betrayed the movement. Nothing like calling your base stupid. Is Trump suffering from mini strokes? The impact of these small capillary break is to affect the right frontal lobe that controls behavior. Mini stroke victims are prone to rages and strange behavior?
Sound familiar.
Now, do NOT BELIEVE that Trump’s vascular problem is no big deal. He could suffer a heart attack from a clot at any time and a possible stroke. Imagine a stroke that turns him into a vegetable. Could happen. What will happen to his felon staffers then?
If I was any of them I would quit their posts ASAP and say they were only following orders a la top Nazis.
So stay tuned to the Donald Trump show.. Maxwell will be his undoing.
[Moderator’s note: Welcome to emptywheel. Please omit your signature and website URL at the end of your comments. We do not do business promotion here; your username and the URL field you completed offer what identity you choose to share with community members and readers. /~Rayne]
I think you mean pétard.
John Mitchell was Nixon’s AG. George Mitchell was a senator from Maine.
I assume if she had real information that could lead to conviction, she would have played that card already for a plea deal.
[Welcome back to emptywheel. Please use the SAME USERNAME and email address each time you comment so that community members get to know you. You attempted to publish this comment as “James” triggering auto-moderation; it has been edited to reflect your established username. Please check your browser’s cache and autofill; future comments may not publish if username does not match. /~Rayne]
Ghislaine Maxwell was principal aide to and procuresse for a famously corrupt man, running an *illegal* global business, providing underage and other sex partners for some of the world’s wealthiest, most powerful men. And that may have just been his day job.
It seems unlikely Maxwell ever intended to share career and potentially life-threatening dope about those men to stay out of prison. It might not have benefited her for very long.
But with Trump in office, the playing field for Maxwell is different. She can get out of prison by *not* disclosing some of what she knows, and by implicating, at least by exaggeration, some of Trump’s enemies, which are legion.
This move by Trump’s attorney is sort of like watching a second rate knockoff of one of the Godfather films. Makes me wonder about what kind of ‘deal’ will be offered to Maxwell.
Dr. Wheeler, you are the best!
As Three Shirt Steve taught us, “Ignore the noise and watch the signal.”
Scrub-a-dub-dub,
The tools in the club,
Who do you think they be?
The dodger, the faker,
The scandal schtick maker,
All with the interviewee.
THIS is fantastic, SL!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIy2j9ak5GY
Rub-A-Dub-Dub | Nursery Rhymes by Little Fox
“The scandal schtick maker,”
Such naches that gives me! TY.
I’m no expert but it’s looking a lot like a conspiracy to me. And conspiracy is the bone to the QAnon dog. Hopefully QAnon will be true to their stated desire of getting the Epstein co-conspirators out in the public daylight despite one of the being Trump. I could be wrong but I don’t remember the QAnons being too deep in the Christian Nationalist camp so they could absorb Trump into their anti-Epstein crusade. Fingers crossed!!
I’ve been wondering if an alternative QAnon persona dropping content from Marcy’s posts would feed that dog.
I started hoping that too!!
So Ghislaine told someone on the outside to go to her stash and fish out that book she made for Epstein and show it to the WSJ as a warning shot that she had so much more on the boss. His consigliere agrees to meet Ghislaine inside the joint – in private, no witnesses – to show the boss could make her life real nice if she laid the rap on the big boys in Democratic gang instead, and maybe give them the “gun” so they could throw it in the East River or melt it down or something. It writes itself, but its kind of stupid and derivative and won’t play well because it has a bunch of plot holes. Nonetheless, it seems like that’s what the Trump people are going for. And one last thing – if Johnson is shutting down the House, and Blanche is making the deal, and Bondi, Gabbard, Patel and the rest are all on full-time damage control, do you think they could know what the ultimate secret they are trying to hide might be? Because someone calling the game plan does know, someone blabbing is inevitable and that is usually how the mob story ends
No, I’d bet none of them know exactly what Trump is so desperate to hide — only that it’s very, very bad. He’d never tell them explicitly, just like he never gives explicit orders to break the law but only muses about someone “ridding me of this meddlesome priest.” Why? For exactly the reason you give, that someone blabbing is inevitable. The problem for him here is that there might be (lordy!) tapes, hard evidence that Trump may have raped that 13 year-old, the only thing I can think of that would make him freak out the way he has.
Trump hires followers. They don’t need to know why they’re doing something, only that their job and status as an inner-circle follower are at risk if they don’t do it. A few people would know, but very few, because that knowledge likely implicates them in crimes.
Epstein might have kept a little black book or two with the details he most wanted ready access to. But most records Epstein and/or Maxwell created to manage the complex networks of their business – and there should be more than one copy – are unlikely to be in that form. The records for one Epstein bank account alone showed more than a billion in transactions over the space of a few years.
To the extent Maxwell is an accomplished blackmailer, as many allege, I don’t see how she is allowed to go free.
Once she leaves the US she owns everyone she has evidence on, including POTUS.
I also suspect her associates have been given orders to release info if something happens to her.
It’s a conundrum.
I think we have to be honest here.
Trump will pardon Maxwell.
He has nothing to lose.
The Dems are checkmated.
Lies will prevail.
Fox News will propagandize.
The coverup will be covered up
Knock off this bullshit demoralization. It’s not honesty, it’s trash. You can’t even offer any supporting documentation to bolster your crap, nor any assessment of what will happen afterward if Trump pardons Maxwell.
Yes.
The status quo of her in prison hoping for a pardon kept her silent – the perfect stable state but only for so long.
Once that memo came out from the DoJ/FBI this thing spiraled out of control and it remains thus.
As you say, what happens if she gets a pardon? The nation goes nuts.
If she gets Epstein-ed?
If she goes to Congress and implicates people who are not Trump?
There are no solutions here.
Just disasters everyone one turns.
Its impossible to conceive how Trump keeps MAGA if he pardons Maxwell, because its impossible to conceive it is anything other than an attempt to buy her silence, which will instantly become a parlor game of how bad it might actually be and fodder for the creative Q minds. To me the real question is what does he do instead, and how he keeps her from repeating the media feeding with other, more salacious stuff. I also think getting out of prison is the only thing that Maxwell cares about, and I’d imagine she’d play any game offered to her if she did. Its a real conundrum, and not at all as gruesome as mentioned above
I think it is possible (and necessary) to be both cynical and to keep pushing forward.
An existential view.
Since Donald Trump has a tenuous grasp of reality and truth, and never seeks to reveal truth, unless it’s part of a deal to benefit him, we can be sure that Markus is buttering up his negotiating opponent, rather than revealing any truth himself.
Bondi and Blanche want Maxwell to say Trump wasn’t involved in any of it. That is the entirety of the motive here. Bondi will probably dangle a pardon if Maxwell is willing to lie and say Trump wasn’t involved.