JD Vance, the US vice-president, will reportedly host a meeting on Wednesday evening at his residence with a handful of senior Trump administration officials to discuss their strategy for dealing with the ongoing scandal surrounding the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The gathering, first reported by CNN, is reportedly set to include the attorney general, Pam Bondi; the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche; the FBI director, Kash Patel; and the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles.
Sources familiar with the gathering told CNN and ABC News that the officials will be discussing whether to release the transcript of the justice department’s recent interview with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s associate and a convicted sex trafficker.
Two weeks ago the justice department sent Blanche, who is also one of Donald Trump’s former personal lawyers, to interview Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison for sex trafficking and other crimes.
That meeting lasted two days and details from it have not been made public.
According to ABC News, the administration is considering publicly releasing the transcripts from the interview as soon as this week.
On Wednesday, Alicia Arden, who filed a police report against Epstein in 1997 accusing him of sexually assaulting her, appeared at a news conference and implored the government to release all of the files related to the Epstein case.
“I’m tired of the government saying that they want to release them. Please just do it,” she said, adding that she would like to know what Blanche asked Maxwell during their meeting, and what Maxwell’s responses were.
Maxwell, Arden said, “should not be pardoned”.
“She was convicted of sex trafficking children,” she added. “This is a terrible crime.”
Arden was joined by her lawyer, Gloria Allred, who also said that the Trump administration should release the “entire transcript” of Blanche’s interview with Maxwell “including all of his questions and all of her answers”.
Last week, Maxwell was quietly transferred from a Florida prison to a lower-security facility in Texas. Trump claimed to reporters that he “didn’t know” about the transfer.
The Trump administration has faced mounting pressure and a bipartisan backlash after the justice department announced it would not be releasing additional documents related to Epstein, despite earlier promises by Trump and Bondi that they would do so.
Epstein, who died in prison in New York in 2019 while awaiting federal trial, is the subject of countless conspiracy theories, in part due to his ties to high-profile and powerful individuals.
On Tuesday, the House oversight committee subpoenaed the justice department for files related to the Epstein sex-trafficking investigation and issued subpoenas for depositions from several prominent figures.
They included the former president Bill Clinton; the former secretary of state Hillary Clinton; multiple former attorneys general, including Jeff Sessions, Alberto Gonzales, William Barr and Merrick Garland; and the former FBI directors James Comey and Robert Mueller.
Axios pointed out that Trump’s former labor secretary Alex Acosta was absent from the list despite his involvement in the 2008 plea deal with Epstein when Acosta was a top federal prosecutor in Florida. Axios noted that Acosta’s boss during his time in Florida, Gonzales, is on the subpoena list.
At the news conference on Wednesday, Allred, who has represented multiple Epstein victims, said she believes that Acosta should also be subpoenaed, as well as Blanche and Bondi.
Allred said that she believes that “victims and survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell should be invited to appear before the House and Senate committees” to share their stories, how “they were victimized by Epstein and Maxwell, the impact on them of these crimes, and how the criminal justice system has helped them or failed them”.
Maxwell, who was found guilty of sex trafficking and other charges in December 2021, is appealing her conviction to the supreme court, citing Epstein’s plea agreement. This week, her attorneys also opposed the government’s request to unseal grand jury transcripts related to the Epstein case.
“Jeffrey Epstein is dead,” her lawyers wrote. “Ghislaine Maxwell is not. Whatever interest the public may have in Epstein, that interest cannot justify a broad intrusion into grand jury secrecy in a case where the defendant is alive, her legal options are viable and her due process rights remain.”
Maxwell also said last week that she was willing to testify before Congress if she was granted immunity.
The Democratic representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, who has introduced a resolution in Congress that opposes Maxwell receiving a presidential pardon or any other form of clemency, told CNN on Wednesday that he believes the “vast majority of Americans oppose any form of clemency for Maxwell, and we need to say that with one voice in Congress as well”.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment relating to the Vance meeting.
