For two days last month, Ghislaine Maxwell, her lawyer, and a top Justice Department official met in a Tallahassee courthouse. Backlash over the Trump administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files was cresting. The private interview did little to quell the increasingly prevalent idea that an unholy bargain between the president and Maxwell was being struck in plain sight: her assistance to Epstein’s former friend Donald Trump in exchange for her freedom, or something closer to it.

As Maxwell’s attorney David Oscar Markus explains it to Vanity Fair , cheerfully apologizing for not being able to say more, there’s no cause for concern—even after his client was moved to a lower-security facility on Friday, and even as Trump waxes freely about his pardon power.

“I wish

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