Top US Justice official grills Esptein accomplice Maxwell

A TOP US Justice Department official spent hours on Thursday grilling Ghislaine Maxwell, the imprisoned accomplice of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as US President Donald Trump struggles to tamp down a furor over his handling of the explosive case.

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David Markus, Maxwell's attorney, said the former British socialite answered every question she was asked during a day-long meeting at a courthouse in Tallahassee, Florida.

"She never invoked a privilege. She never declined to answer," Markus told reporters. "She answered all the questions truthfully, honestly, and to the best of her ability." Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said he would continue interviewing Maxwell yesterday and "share additional information about what we learned at the appropriate time".

Markus said he was not going to comment on the "substance" of the meeting with Blanche, Trump's former personal lawyer for his hush money trial and two federal criminal cases.

Maxwell, 63, is serving a 20-year sentence after being convicted in 2021 of recruiting underage girls for Epstein, who died in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial in his own sex trafficking case.