MIAMI — Miami defense attorney David O. Markus represents Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous former girlfriend, a convicted British socialite who may hold the keys not only to her fate but that of President Donald Trump.

Markus’ client, Ghislaine Maxwell, found guilty of recruiting underage girls for the billionaire financier, was questioned on Thursday and Friday by the U.S. deputy attorney general about her insider knowledge of the Epstein sex-abuse case — a resurgent scandal threatening Trump’s presidency as his MAGA base clamors for answers.

What Maxwell might know about a long-speculated “client list” of famous people possibly kept by Epstein, who authorities say killed himself in a New York jail cell in 2019 before his federal sex trafficking trial, could change the course of Trump’s presidency. Trump and Epstein, both New Yorkers with mansions in Palm Beach, had socialized for years before falling out.

In a dramatic development on Thursday, Markus and Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence at a federal prison in Tallahassee, met with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche at the U.S. courthouse in Florida’s capital. Markus called the meeting “very productive.”

“He took a full day and asked a lot of questions and Ms. Maxwell answered every single question,” Markus told reporters after the meeting at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the courthouse. “She never invoked a privilege. She never declined to answer. She answered all the questions truthfully, honestly and to the best of her ability.”

The trio — Maxwell, Markus and Blanche — met again on Friday in the same location, in what many legal observers have called a highly unusual gathering.

“How many defendants turned witnesses does a deputy AG personally interview?” said a South Florida defense lawyer, who did not want to be identified. “Get your popcorn.”

Harvard law grad

Markus, 52, a Miami native who went to Harvard Law School, heads his own firm and hosts a popular blog and podcast. Known as a top-tier defense attorney whose career started in the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Miami,

Markus has been thrust into the national spotlight along with his client, Maxwell. In late 2021, she was convicted in Manhattan federal court of sex trafficking minor girls for Epstein at his homes in Manhattan, Palm Beach, New Mexico and the Virgin Islands — over the course of a decade.

Curiously, the closed-door meetings this week with the deputy attorney general come at a critical stage in the appeal of her conviction, which will be considered as a possible case by the U.S. Supreme Court in the fall. The Justice Department has opposed her challenge every step of the way, in the federal district and appellate courts in New York.

Markus declined to comment about the meetings between his client and Blanche in Tallahassee.

In their negotiations, Maxwell and Markus are walking a fine line, but so are Blanche and Trump.

Before Blanche was appointed by Trump as second in command behind Attorney General Pam Bondi, he represented him in a criminal fraud trial in the Manhattan state court in 2024.

Trump was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records, stemming from a scheme to conceal a $130,000 payment to an adult film star Stormy Daniels that was made to keep her quiet just before the 2016 presidential election about their alleged affair.

After Trump won the 2024 election, the judge gave him no prison time, but Trump became the first U.S. president with a felony conviction.

After the trial, Markus hosted Blanche on his Apple podcast, “For the Defense,” which focused on his experience representing Trump.

On a parallel track, Trump had hired Blanche to be his lead attorney in the 2023 classified documents case brought against him by the federal special counsel Jack Smith. Markus was among other lawyers approached by Trump’s defense team, but he turned them down.

Blanche and Markus’ “cozy” relationship, as some have described it, may have led the deputy attorney general to reach out to Markus this month to discuss how Maxwell might be a witness in the rekindled Epstein investigation.

In early July, the Justice Department and FBI issued a memo shutting down the investigation, saying there was nothing more to report about Epstein’s suicide or the existence of a client list — only to reopen it amid a bombardment of criticism by Trump’s right-wing base.

Adding fuel to the fire: Bondi had told Fox News in February that an Epstein client list was “sitting” on her desk, but then changed her story after the FBI memo was released.

Trump’s MAGA supporters grew more enraged. They repeated all kinds of conspiracy theories on social media and in podcasts, suggesting without proof that Epstein didn’t kill himself and that Democratic President Bill Clinton and other major public figures may have sexually abused the underage girls that Epstein recruited to his residences.

They continued to fuel speculation about his client list and who might be on it, despite Trump’s relationship with Epstein before he was convicted of soliciting minor girls in a state plea deal in West Palm Beach in 2008.

Since then, the House Oversight Committee has voted to subpoena the Department of Justice for its files on Epstein, and issued a subpoena to interview Maxwell on Aug. 11.

Reacting to backlash, Trump said he would continue to push for the release of relevant information in the case. This week, his Justice Department unsuccessfully asked a South Florida federal judge to release grand jury records in the original Epstein probe dating back almost two decades.

Political storm escalates

Most Americans believe that the U.S. government is concealing information, including about who else may have been involved in Epstein’s abuse of the young girls at his residences, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll.

As the political storm escalated, Blanche announced earlier this week that he intended to meet with Maxwell, who has maintained her innocence and is appealing her conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Blanche said he had reached out to Maxwell’s lawyer to see if she might have “information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims.”

On Tuesday, Markus issued a short statement, saying: “I can confirm that we are in discussions with the government and that Ghislaine will always testify truthfully. We are grateful to President Trump for his commitment to uncovering the truth in this case.”

Maxwell testimony

Miami lawyer Joseph DeMaria, a former federal organized crime prosecutor, said the conversation between Maxwell, Markus and Blanche is very different from the typical effort by a prosecutor to gain the cooperation of a convicted defendant to testify against her co-conspirators.

As a rule, prosecutors are very wary about making a deal with a convicted felon because the testimony may not be credible to present to a jury.

“In this case, Mr. Blanche is trying to develop testimony to be presented to Congress in a political forum,” DeMaria told the Herald. “If Ms. Maxwell presents congressional testimony that is favorable to the president, whether or not that testimony can be corroborated, that testimony can be used to end the constant inquiries about his [Trump’s] relationship with Epstein.

“But Ms. Maxwell won’t offer to clear the president with her congressional testimony for free,” he added. “Mr. Blanche will have to find a way to offer Ms. Maxwell a get-out-of-jail card in order to secure positive testimony for the president.”

However, Maxwell’s testimony may present other potential pitfalls for herself or Trump, because of her well-documented lack of credibility.

After Maxwell’s sex-trafficking conviction, prosecutors branded her crimes as “monstrous” and cast strong doubt about her honesty.

“In short, the defendant has lied repeatedly about her crimes, exhibited an utter failure to accept responsibility, and demonstrated repeated disrespect for the law and the Court,” prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York wrote in June 2022 before her sentencing.

Two of Markus’ former colleagues in the Miami Federal Public Defender’s Office said Maxwell is in good hands, noting that he “lives and breathes the law.”

“Nobody wins everything, but he wins often,” Miami attorney Henry Bell said.

“He thinks like a criminal defense lawyer and fights to the end for his client,” Miami lawyer Orlando do Campo said.

Both seasoned defense attorneys said Maxwell’s potential testimony could have repercussions not only for herself and Trump but for any number of prominent figures in Epstein’s social circles.

“The reason the Justice Department doesn’t want to disclose the Epstein files is that it could harm the reputation of innocent people who associated with him,” Bell said.

“If Jeffrey Epstein’s client list, or what I consider his ‘association list,’ were revealed, this could not only be a left or right thing, it might affect a lot of people across the political spectrum,” do Campo said. “There are a lot of weird bedfellows here.”

History of Epstein-Maxwell cases

In June 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges of soliciting teenage girls at his Palm Beach mansion and served about one year in jail — after Miami U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta chose not to present a 53-page indictment to the grand jury alleging the more serious federal charges of sex trafficking dozens of minor girls. If convicted, those charges would have carried potential punishment ranging from a mandatory 10 years in prison up to a life sentence.

Epstein’s victims called it a “sweetheart plea deal” that allowed him to go to work or do whatever he wanted for six days out of every week. The deal also shut down an FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein’s sex crimes.

Acosta’s “non-prosecution agreement,” signed in September 2007, was initially kept secret from Epstein’s victims. The agreement also immunized several of his co-conspirators from federal prosecution.

The Herald’s investigation of the secretive plea deal, part of its “Perversion of Justice” series by reporter Julie K. Brown, led to Acosta resigning as U.S. Secretary of Labor in 2019 during the first Trump administration.

In July of that year, federal prosecutors in New York filed an indictment charging Epstein, 66, with conspiracy and sex-trafficking charges — similar to the case that was not pursued by federal prosecutors in South Florida.

But the following month, Epstein hanged himself in a federal lock-up in New York, according to authorities.

Upon the death of the notorious defendant, prosecutors turned their attention to his former girlfriend, Maxwell. In 2020, she was indicted on conspiracy and sex-trafficking charges and convicted the following year for her role in the abuse of underage girls.

On Dec. 29, 2021, she was found guilty of five of the six counts against her, including sex trafficking of a minor, transporting a minor for illegal sexual activity, and related conspiracy charges. In June 2022, Maxwell, 63, was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Markus had worked as her appellate attorney during the trial. After her conviction, he filed Maxwell’s appeal.

His argument: Epstein’s non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors in South Florida should have protected Maxwell from facing charges in New York. But both the federal district and appellate courts in New York found that the deal, which promised to immunize Epstein’s co-conspirators, only applied to South Florida.

In the fall, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide whether to consider her appeal.

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