Meanwhile, Todd Blanche — the United States Deputy Attorney General — met for a second day in a row with Maxwell in a federal lockup to find out what she knows about the Epstein case. Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison after she was found guilty in her 2021 trial of child sex trafficking in connection with Epstein. As for Epstein, he committed suicide in a Manhattan jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on his own sex trafficking charges.

It’s unusual for a deputy attorney general to interview defendants in such cases, which are usually reserved for line prosecutors. But Trump has been rocked by all the controversy around the so-called “Epstein Files,” which has been a fascination among his MAGA base and other conspiracy theorists, who just won’t let it go.

And U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has also gotten swept up in the Epstein mess. You may recall … Bondi first indicated Epstein’s “client list” was sitting on her desk, but then her Dept. of Justice and the FBI changed their tune, issuing a joint memo declaring Epstein did not in fact keep such a list and reiterating that Epstein killed himself behind bars.

The backlash was immediate and intense from Trump’s base … and it hasn’t died down one bit thanks to last week’s bombshell article in the Wall Street Journal about Trump allegedly writing a bawdy 50th birthday message to Epstein.