SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
The Trump administration is still scrambling to contain the fallout from its handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. The Justice Department now says it's trying to arrange a meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell, who's in federal prison for her role helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls. NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas is following this, and he's with us on the line. Hi, Ryan.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Hi there.
PFEIFFER: Would you recap how Maxwell fits into the Epstein saga?
LUCAS: So she's a longtime associate of Epstein's. The two even dated at one point. And Maxwell was convicted in 2021 by a federal jury in New York of sex trafficking and other charges for her role helping to recruit and groom young girls - some as young as 14 - to be sexually exploited by Epstein. She's currently serving a 20-year prison sentence, but she's still fighting her conviction. She's appealed it. She's arguing that part of a non-prosecution agreement that Epstein struck with prosecutors in Florida should have prohibited her from facing federal charges in New York. Two courts have rejected her appeal. She wants the Supreme Court to review her case, which is something the Justice Department is opposing.
PFEIFFER: And Ryan, now, after a conviction by a federal jury, the Justice Department wants to talk with her?
LUCAS: That's right. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement that he has been in contact with Maxwell's lawyer to see whether she would be willing to speak with Justice Department attorneys. He says that if Maxwell has any information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the DOJ will hear what she has to say. Now, it's unclear what exactly Maxwell would have to say. She didn't testify at her trial. She was deposed, though, in 2016 as part of a civil suit, basically said she didn't know anything, and she actually later faced perjury charges in connection with that deposition. Now, Maxwell's attorney has confirmed that he is in talks with the department.
It is important to point one thing out here, though. Maxwell can't be forced to sit down with prosecutors. She doesn't have to talk to anyone. In fact, she would likely only do so if there's something in it for her, and that something would likely be either a presidential pardon or a commutation of her sentence. And that would be a controversial thing to do, given that she was convicted of sex trafficking girls as young as 14.
PFEIFFER: So DOJ wanting to talk to her is a new development, but there's also DOJ asking a federal court to unseal grand jury transcripts from the Epstein case. What's the latest on that effort?
LUCAS: That's right. The department made that request on Friday. Grand jury proceedings, though, are generally secret, but the department says an exception should be made here because of the public interest in this case. Now, judges in New York overseeing the Maxwell and Epstein cases have to sign off on this. They have said in orders yesterday that they want to resolve this as quickly as they can, but that the department didn't address adequately why these transcripts should be made public. So they gave the department a week to do so. They also set a two-week deadline to hear about this idea from representatives of Epstein, as well as from his victims.
PFEIFFER: We've been talking a lot on the show this week about how the grand jury transcripts may not be as revelatory as some people hope. How much are people likely to learn from them?
LUCAS: Yeah. Probably not a lot. This would be just really a small sliver of the materials that prosecutors and agents collected in the course of their investigation. And look, prosecutors generally present only as much information to the grand jury as is necessary to get an indictment, no more than that. So usually they'll have, say, an FBI agent present summary testimony. They aren't going to bring in every single government witness before the grand jury. They might present a few exhibits but not reams of text messages and emails and so forth. So if these transcripts are made public, it would really just be a small piece, a small sliver of information and unlikely to satisfy everybody out there who's clamoring for more on this.
PFEIFFER: That's NPR's Ryan Lucas. Ryan, thank you.
LUCAS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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