Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, on Monday demanded all recordings and transcripts of the July 24 and 25 Justice Department interviews with Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime partner of Jeffrey Epstein who is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking.
In a letter to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who conducted the interviews, Mr. Durbin also demanded that the Justice Department commit to offering no pardon or commutation of Ms. Maxwell’s sentence in exchange for information, citing “serious questions about the potential for a corrupt bargain between the Trump Administration and Ghislaine Maxwell.”
The letter, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, was co-signed by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, who also sits on the Judiciary Committee.
Because Democrats are in the minority and have no subpoena power, their demands may carry little weight with Mr. Blanche. But the letter reflected how Democrats are trying to keep pressure on the Trump administration on an issue that has, at least for now, cleaved from the president a portion of his typically loyal MAGA base that is demanding a release of files that the administration has refused to make public. Mr. Epstein, a financier and convicted sex trafficker who died in 2019, was well connected and his friends included Mr. Trump.
In the letter, Mr. Durbin noted that the meetings between Mr. Blanche and Ms. Maxwell last week were highly unusual. Such interviews would typically be conducted by line prosecutors more familiar with the details of the case, and more able to determine on the spot if Ms. Maxwell was lying, he noted in the letter.
That Mr. Blanche himself conducted such interviews, Mr. Durbin wrote, led him and Mr. Whitehouse to believe that the meetings were “another tactic to distract from DOJ’s failure to fulfill Attorney General Bondi’s commitment that the American people would see ‘the full Epstein files.’”
Mr. Durbin also wrote that there were “serious concerns that Ms. Maxwell may provide false information or selectively withhold information, in return for a pardon or sentence commutation.”
In the letter, the senators also demanded the names and titles of everyone present during the two days of interviews with Ms. Maxwell.
And they questioned why the Justice Department believed she would be truthful when the Trump administration previously argued in court about her “willingness to brazenly lie under oath about her conduct.”
They also requested the complete terms of an offer of limited immunity made to Ms. Maxwell to secure her cooperation in the interviews. And they demanded the Microsoft SharePoint online collaborative file that Mr. Blanche’s office reportedly maintained to log mentions of Mr. Trump in the Epstein-related records that have been reviewed by the Justice Department and the F.B.I.
It is unlikely that Mr. Durbin and Mr. Whitehouse will receive any of that information. But Democrats are eager to call for transparency and force the administration to explain why it is unwilling to offer it.
“The victims and survivors of Jeffrey Epstein have been repeatedly let down by the criminal justice system,” the letter states. “Rather than engaging in this elaborate ruse, DOJ should simply release the Epstein files, as Attorney General Bondi promised to do.”
President Trump has not closed the door on pardoning Ms. Maxwell, noting only that he has a right to do so. But the idea has already encountered some resistance even from Republicans on Capitol Hill.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a hard-right Georgia Republican, has fiercely criticized the administration for not releasing the Epstein files as promised and raised questions about whether Ms. Maxwell may be motivated by a desire for a pardon.
On Sunday, Speaker Mike Johnson also said he was wary of granting a pardon to Ms. Maxwell.
“I think she should have a life sentence at least,” Mr. Johnson said on “Meet the Press.” Concerning the prospect of a pardon, he said he would “have great pause about that, as any reasonable person would.”