A noncommittal response from Donald Trump over whether he would pardon convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell provoked a response from the president’s staunch ally and far-right influencer Laura Loomer.
“Do not do it,” Loomer wrote on X, tagging Trump, JD Vance and Pam Bondi, the US attorney general. “I repeat. Do not do it. There will be no coming back from that. I repeat again. For the love of God. Do Not Do It.”
Loomer’s rebuke came after Trump on Monday evidently left the door open to a pardon for Maxwell, a close associate of Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender and the president’s former friend. The US supreme court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from Maxwell against her conviction on charges of sex trafficking.
Related: US supreme court declines to hear Ghislaine Maxwell’s appeal of sex-trafficking conviction
In response to media questioning about whether he may use his presidential pardon powers to free Maxwell from a 20-year prison sentence, Trump said he would need to “speak to” the US justice department.
“I haven’t heard the name in so long,” Trump said. “I can say this – that I’d have to take a look at it. I would have to take a look.”
Congressman Robert Garcia, a senior member of the House committee on oversight and government reform that in September released material connected to Epstein, welcomed the court’s rejection to hear an appeal.
“The supreme court has correctly rejected Ghislaine Maxwell’s latest attempt to escape justice,” the California Democrat said. He also said it was “outrageous” that the Trump-led justice department in early August moved Maxwell from a federal in prison in Florida to a less restrictive facility in Texas amid speculation over whether she may benefit from presidential clemency.
That transfer came after Todd Blanche, the US deputy attorney general, met with Maxwell for an interview. Audio recordings and transcripts of the meeting were also released, but they yielded little new information – and Garcia’s statement called the decision to have that conversation with Maxwell as “shameful”.
Trump’s administration has spent much of his second presidency trying to contain a scandal surrounding its failure to fulfil a promise to release all of the federal government’s documentation on Epstein. Epstein died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, and he previously had pleaded guilty to state charges in Florida of solicitation of a minor.
The president on Monday also addressed the case of Sean “Diddy” Combs, the music mogul who on Friday was sentenced to four years and two months in prison after being convicted on federal prostitution-related charges. Combs was acquitted on more serious charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking.
Trump claimed that Combs had reached out to him to ask for a pardon. But, referring to Combs by a moniker he dropped more than two decades ago, Trump suggested he had blown off the request.
“A lot of people have asked me for pardons,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “I call him Puff Daddy – [he] has asked me for a pardon.”
According to a letter from Combs’s legal team, he has petitioned to serve his sentence at Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Fort Dix, a low-security prison in New Jersey that offers a drug treatment program. Combs said at his sentencing that he had become addicted to painkillers after ankle surgery in 2000.
“In order to address drug abuse issues and to maximize family visitation and rehabilitative efforts, we request that the Court strongly recommend … that Mr. Combs be placed at FCI Fort Dix,” Combs’s lawyer Teny Geragos wrote in part to judge Arun Subramanian.
Subramanian has not issued a decision on where Combs will serve the sentence that the judge imposed on him.
