US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters on the South Lawn before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on July 25, 2025, in Washington, DC en route to Turnberry, Scotland.
Jim Watson | Afp | Getty Images
President Donald Trump on Friday deflected questions about his former friend Jeffrey Epstein as Epstein’s convicted sex offender accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell met with a top Department of Justice official in Florida for the second day in a row.
“I have nothing to do with the guy,” Trump said of Epstein, with whom he had socialized for years before falling out with the now-dead pedophile in the mid-2000s.
Trump instead said people should focus on others who, like him, had previously socialized with Epstein, among them former President Bill Clinton and ex-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who also served as president of Harvard University.
People “don’t talk about them. They talk about me,” Trump griped before departing for a trip to Scotland.
“You should focus on Clinton. You should focus on the president of Harvard, the former president of Harvard, you should focus on some of the hedge fund guys,” Trump said.
“I’ll give you a list. These guys lived with Jeffrey Epstein, I sure as hell didn’t.”
Asked if he was considering a pardon or sentence commutation for Maxwell — who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for procuring and grooming young girls to be sexually abused by Epstein — Trump said, “It’s something I haven’t thought about.”
“I’m allowed to do it,” he added.
Maxwell’s lawyer, David Oscar Markus, when asked by reporters about possible clemency from Trump in exchange for her cooperation with the DOJ, replied: “No offers have been made.”
Markus, who spoke after a meeting with Maxwell and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in Tallahassee, Florida, said, “I am not going to comment on what we’re hoping for” from those discussions. The lawyer had been asked if Maxwell hoped to get some kind of deal, possibly including a recommended sentence reduction, from prosecutors.
“Ghislaine answered every single question asked of her over the last day and a half, she answered those questions honestly, truthfully, to the best of her ability,” Markus said. “She never invoked a privilege. She never refused to answer a question.”
“They asked about every single, every possible thing you could imagine, everything.”
Trump has faced growing pressure to release information about Epstein after the DOJ earlier this month reneged on promises by Attorney General Pam Bondi and top FBI officials to disclose files criminal investigators assembled in their sex trafficking probe of Epstein.
Trump last week ordered Bondi to seek the unsealing of grand jury transcripts related to investigations of Epstein and Maxwell, shortly after The Wall Street Journal reported he had sent a “bawdy” letter to Epstein in 2003 for the money manager’s 50th birthday.
“I don’t even know what they’re talking about. Now, somebody could have written a letter and used my name, but that’s happened a lot,” Trump said about the letter on Friday.
On Tuesday, Blanche said he would seek to meet Maxwell and ask her if she had information about other people who had potentially abused underage girls and young women connected to Epstein. Blanche is a former criminal defense lawyer for Trump.
Blanche met for hours with Maxwell and her attorney on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Tallahassee, the same city where she is serving her prison term.
Before their second meeting Friday, Maxwell’s lawyer Markus told reporters, “Ghislaine has been treated unfairly for over five years now.”
“If you looked up scapegoat in the dictionary, her face would be next to the definition next to the dictionary definition of it,” he said. “So, you know, we’re grateful for this opportunity to finally be able to say what really happened, and that’s what we’re going to do yesterday and today.”
Markus said that Maxwell has “been in terrible, awful conditions for five years. We wouldn’t keep animals the way she’s been kept in prison.”
“We just ask that folks look at what she has to say with an open mind, and that’s what Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has promised us, and everything she says can be corroborated and and she’s telling the truth,” Markus said.
“She’s got no reason to lie at this point, and she’s going to keep telling the truth.”
