The Missing Interview and the Maxwell File: What the FBI Compiled on the Morning of Blanche's Interrogation
The FBI compiled allegations against 13 men the same morning Todd Blanche sat down with Ghislaine Maxwell in Tallahassee. The email chain starts with a missing interview that nobody has explained.
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At 7:18 on the morning of July 24, 2025, an agent in the FBI’s New York field office sent an email with the subject “Epstein - Cellmate Interview.” The message was brief. The agent had been looking for a documented FBI interview of Nicholas Tartaglione, Jeffrey Epstein’s cellmate during his first apparent suicide attempt on July 23, 2019. The agent found nothing.
“I did not find an interview of Nicholas Tartaglione, Epstein’s cellmate during his first suicide attempt, documented in Sentinel. Please reach out to case agent Amanda Gildea for additional information or context.”
Sentinel is the FBI’s internal case management system. If an interview was conducted and properly filed, it would be there. The agent found no record of one. Tartaglione was the only other person in the cell when Epstein was found on the floor with marks on his neck and a strip of bedsheet around it. He is, to this day, the only eyewitness to whatever happened on July 23, 2019. And according to this email, produced six years later and released through the EFTA, no formal interview of Mr.Tartaglione appears to exist in the FBI’s own system.
31 minutes later, at 7:49 AM, a second email went out from the same chain. This one came from the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of FBI New York’s Violent Crime Threat unit. It was not about Tartaglione, it was a list of names.
The Request
The ASAC thanked the first agent and then changed the subject entirely. No follow up on the missing Tartaglione interview and no instructions to locate it. However, there was a new task.
“Can you write me a sentence or two for the below are the salacious statements made against the individuals in the file. Feel free to add if I missed someone.”
Below that request was a list of 13 names:
Trump
Harvey Weinstein
Prince Andrew
Glen Dubin
Jes Staley
Leon Black
Les Wexner
Alan Dershowitz
Bill Clinton
Howard Lutnick
Alexander Guest
Jean Luc Brunel
William Barr
Rough characterizations had already been written next to several of the names.
Dershowitz, “massage on Epstein plane, might not be a minor.”
Clinton, “orgy girl didn’t attend with Tony Blair.”
Lutnick, “for ponzi scheme and money laundering.”
Barr, “for being present when a girl was raped.”
The agent making the request already seemed to know what was in the file. They were not asking anyone to investigate further or identify new names, they wanted the existing allegations pulled together, tightened up, and put into a form that could be quickly reviewed or presented.
The Response
At 9:25 AM, less than two hours later, the summaries came back. Each name now had one or more victim statements attached, drawn from the case file. Some were from identified victims whose names are redacted. Some were from NTOC entries, the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center tip line.
Under Trump was two entries. One woman said Epstein introduced her to Trump, who forced her head down to his exposed genitals, which she bit. In response, she said, Trump punched her in the head and kicked her out. A second woman recalled Epstein introducing her to Trump and Epstein saying “This is a good one, huh,” to which Trump replied “Yes.”
Weinstein had three entries from three different women describing massage sessions that turned into assault, including one in which Weinstein threatened to have women come force her to comply.
Under Prince Andrew was also three entries. One woman said Maxwell told her to make Prince Andrew happy by doing the “exact same things to him that she did for Epstein because he is good friends with Maxwell.” A man named Steve Scully told investigators he witnessed Andrew on Epstein’s island grinding against a young girl. And a third entry described orgies on Epstein’s plane.
Dubin had one entry. Maxwell instructed a victim to give Dubin a massage and “do what she did for Epstein.”
Staley, one entry. A victim said Epstein told her to give Staley a massage at Epstein’s mansion. Staley forced her hands on his crotch and had “rough sex” with her.
Black, two entries from two women. One described a massage that turned sexual while Black was naked, with Epstein making jokes about Black’s body. The second said Black raped her numerous times, sex trafficked her, and threatened to destroy her life, claiming he had connections with the police.
Wexner, two entries. Steve Scully stated Wexner was number one on Epstein’s speed dial. A second person stated that Epstein earned his money from having sex with Wexner himself.
Dershowitz, one entry. A woman said she gave him a massage on Epstein’s plane. The FBI noted she was not a minor.
Clinton, also one entry. A woman said she met Epstein through another victim who had traveled with Epstein and Clinton to Africa. At 1:40 PM that afternoon, several hours into the Blanche interview, the ASAC sent a follow-up asking for an additional Clinton item:
“In the main SS, there was mention of an orgy with Tony Blair. Can you cut and paste that.”
The final version of the document includes two more Clinton entries: a woman who said she was invited to an orgy with Clinton but did not attend, and an NTOC caller who claimed to have participated in “big orgy parties” with Clinton.
Lutnick, one entry. A man named Simon Andriesz reported that Lutnick made his money through Ponzi schemes and money laundering, that Lutnick and Epstein were neighbors, and that Epstein sold Lutnick a home for ten dollars which was later sold for millions. This is an NTOC tip, not a victim statement. LPF has not been able to independently verify who Andriesz is.
Guest, one entry. A woman described as “not a victim in Epstein case” said she was a paid escort for Alexander Guest and that Maxwell hired her to be an escort for Epstein.
Brunel, two entries. One woman said Brunel and Epstein were close and traveled together often. Another said she saw Brunel on Epstein’s island. Brunel died by suicide in a Paris jail in February 2022 while awaiting trial on rape charges.
Barr, two entries. One woman said she was at Epstein’s home for a model event, ran into Barr, who told her he wanted to see her the next time he came. At a separate point, Epstein asked if she had ever met Barr. A second entry, from the NTOC tip line, came from a woman who claimed she was a victim of Epstein and that Barr was present during some of the abuse. William Barr was the Attorney General of the United States when Epstein was indicted in July 2019 and when Epstein died in federal custody the following month.
The Timing
The entire email chain was produced on July 24, 2025. That is the same day Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche sat down with Ghislaine Maxwell at the federal courthouse in downtown Tallahassee, Florida.
Blanche arrived at the courthouse around 9:00 AM. The interview ran nearly eight hours. Maxwell’s attorney David Oscar Markus told WCTV afterward that there were “a lot of questions” and that “it went on all day.” Blanche posted on X that evening: “Today, I met with Ghislaine Maxwell, and I will continue my interview of her tomorrow.”
The interview continued on July 25. WCTV’s drone camera captured Maxwell being transported back to FCI Tallahassee that evening, wearing all brown, handcuffed in front, carrying an unidentified box.
The list of names in the FBI email and the list of names Blanche walked Maxwell through overlap almost entirely. Whether the email was prepared for the interview, or whether both were drawn from the same underlying FBI compilation, the documents do not say. But the match is close enough that the coincidence requires an explanation nobody has yet to offer.
One name stands out by its absence. According to reporting on the released transcript, Blanche asked Maxwell about nearly every individual on the FBI’s list. He did not bring up Howard Lutnick. Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, had been confirmed as Secretary of Commerce five months earlier and was a sitting member of Trump’s cabinet. The Lutnick entry in the FBI file is the weakest of the thirteen, based on a single NTOC tip from an individual with no documented victim status. However, it is there, on a list that was compiled the same morning of Maxwell’s interview, and it was the only name Blanche did not raise.
Maxwell’s Team
The transcript identifies everyone who took part in the interview. Representing the government were Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Acting Associate Deputy Attorney General Diego Pestana, FBI Special Agent Spencer Horn, and Deputy U.S. Marshal Mark Beard. Maxwell was represented by David Markus, Leah Saffian, and Melissa Madrigal.
I have been reporting extensively on Leah Saffian specifically, and her presence deserves the attention. She has represented members of the Maxwell family since 1991, and I have previously examined her long-running role in that relationship. You can read that here.
She was also photographed arriving in Tallahassee with Markus during the July 2025 meetings and remained part of Maxwell’s legal team throughout both days.
This is the same attorney who received $100,000 from Maxwell eight days before Jeffrey Epstein’s death, employed Maxwell’s sister Isabel as a paralegal, appeared during Maxwell’s 2021 criminal trial, and has spent decades representing the Maxwell family.
Given that history, her attendance at the interview is quite noteworthy. What we do not yet have confirmed is what role she played before, what advice she may have provided during, or how much influence she had over Maxwell’s approach to the meetings.
The Victim File
The salacious-statements email was not the only document the FBI’s New York field office produced that day. A second email, sent at 3:41 PM Eastern on July 24, asked for “the vic allegations focusing on Maxwell specifically.” The response came the next morning, July 25.
That document, EFTA01648959, is a summary of victim allegations against Maxwell drawn directly from witness statements in the case file. One victim described being flown alone to New Mexico in 1996, where she spent a weekend with Epstein and Maxwell. She specifically remembered telling Maxwell she was a junior in high school because they discussed her homework, her plans for senior year, and her desire to attend college. Maxwell encouraged her to massage Epstein’s feet and showed her how he liked it done. They went to the movies together to see Primal Fear, and outside the theater, Maxwell pulled down Epstein’s sweatpants in a joking manner. During the film, Epstein held the girl’s hand and stroked her arm without trying to hide the contact. Maxwell later insisted on giving the girl a massage during which the girl was partially or fully nude, in a room with an open door leading to where Epstein was located.
A second victim said she was fifteen when she first met Maxwell, though records showed she was sixteen. She met Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago, where she was working as a locker room attendant, and Maxwell recruited her to come to Epstein’s Palm Beach residence to massage Epstein. The massage became sexual. Maxwell and Epstein taught her how to perform sex acts, then directed her to look for and recruit other young females. Maxwell taught her by taking her on shopping trips and making her practice the pitch: “I know this really nice guy who likes to help people out. You can make some money.” After recruitment, Maxwell would schedule the girl to arrive at the Palm Beach residence at a specific date and time.
The same victim described Maxwell initiating sexual contact during group television watching by taking off her own clothes and directing the girl to give her oral sex, sometimes involving a sex toy, while Epstein was present. The same victim, whose account corresponds to the publicly known allegations made by Virginia Giuffre, described Maxwell telling her she was going to meet a prince and should “make him happy and do the exact same things for him that she did for Epstein because the prince was a good friend of Maxwell’s.”
This is the prosecution’s own summary of its own case, compiled by the FBI’s Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force and sent internally on the second morning of the Blanche/Maxwell interview.
The Case File They Handed Him
A third document, EFTA01648957-58, is a full chronological summary of the Maxwell case from inception to sentencing. It was sent to the same chain on July 25, 2025, the second day of the interview.
It begins: “On 12/06/2018, the FBI New York Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force initiated a child sex trafficking case following a request by the United States Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York, based on several victims that had been sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein in the mid-2000s.”
The summary runs through the indictment, arrest, superseding indictment, trial, verdict, and sentencing. It notes that Maxwell was first mentioned in the case file on April 23, 2019, and that SDNY proffered Maxwell with her defense counsel prior to indictment. It notes that victim interviews revealed Maxwell groomed minor victims by befriending them, developing rapport, then normalizing the abuse. It notes that Maxwell was present while minor victims were undressed and that she instructed them on how to massage Epstein, including sexual contact.
It ends with the sentence: Maxwell was sentenced to twenty years in prison with five years of supervised release and a $750,000 fine for participating and facilitating the sexual abuse and sex trafficking of minors for and with Jeffrey Epstein.
This is the document the FBI prepared for the man who is now nominated to be the next Attorney General of the United States.
The Phone Wrapped in Tin Foil
One more document sits in this group. It is the FBI’s arrest report from July 2, 2020, pulled into the same production alongside the emails above as part of the file compiled for the Blanche interview. It describes what agents found when they arrived at 338 East Washington Road in Bradford, New Hampshire, to take Maxwell into custody.
The report describes agents breaching a locked gate, proceeding to the main residence, and encountering a man running with a handheld radio. That man was later identified as Martin Jackson, a member of Maxwell’s security team. Agents knocked and announced. They observed Maxwell run into a room to the left of the front door and close the door behind her. They breached the front door, opened the room, and found Maxwell standing inside. She was taken into custody at approximately 8:35 AM.
On the bed in the room where Maxwell was standing, agents found a handheld radio. A cell phone on the bedside table was brought along with her at her request.
Then agents found something else. Upstairs, in plain view on a desk, was what appeared to be a second cell phone wrapped entirely in tin foil. The FBI photographed it. The image, EFTA01648961, shows the device sitting on a wooden desk next to a paperclip and a rubber band, covered completely in crumpled aluminum foil. When agents asked Maxwell if she wanted to bring this phone as well, to access her contacts, she said no.
Wrapping a phone in foil is a known technique for blocking cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS signals. It is something a person does when they do not want a device to communicate with anything or be located by anyone.
Maxwell was offered water, food, and coffee before her transport. During the drive to Merrimack County Department of Corrections, she asked to be read her charges again. When told about the enticement of a minor charge, she asked whether it involved one victim or more than one. She then asked about a specific individual by name. The name is redacted. The agent told her details about other individuals would not be discussed.
What Happened Next
A version of the “salacious statements” compilation was sent to FBI Director Kash Patel on August 7, 2025, two weeks after the Blanche interview. The Miami Herald and the Telegraph both confirmed the transmission.
On August 1, 2025, one week after the interview, the Bureau of Prisons transferred Maxwell from FCI Tallahassee to Federal Prison Camp Bryan in Texas, a minimum-security facility. House Oversight Democrats demanded all documents related to the transfer and to any “accommodations made by BOP to facilitate this meeting or secure her cooperation.” We have written more about her transfer and you can read that here.
On September 16, 2025, six weeks after receiving the compilation, Patel testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Senator John Kennedy asked him directly: “Who, if anyone, did Epstein traffic these young women to besides himself?” Patel answered: “Himself. There is no credible information, none, if there were I would bring the case yesterday, that he trafficked to other individuals.”
He said this about the compilation he had received which listed 13 men and the specific allegations against each of them, drawn from victim statements in the FBI’s own case file.
The Missing Interview
Let’s go back to the first line of the first email. 7:18 AM, July 24, 2025.
Nicholas Tartaglione was a former police officer from Briarcliff Manor, New York, who had been convicted of a quadruple murder. He shared a cell with Jeffrey Epstein at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan during the summer of 2019. On July 23, 2019, Epstein was found on the floor of their cell with marks on his neck and a strip of bedsheet. He initially told a correctional officer that Tartaglione had tried to kill him. About a week later, Epstein recanted, saying he had “never had any issues” with Tartaglione and “didn’t want to make up something that isn’t there.” Tartaglione has consistently denied touching Epstein.
Eighteen days later, on August 10, 2019, Epstein was found dead. Reporting at the time indicated that the Bureau of Prisons had already informed Tartaglione he would not face charges over the July 23 incident.
In May 2026, a federal judge ordered the release of a note that Tartaglione’s attorney said had been found in the cell after the July 23 incident. The note has since been the subject of litigation and public debate.
But the question raised by this email is much simpler. Tartaglione was the only other person in the cell when Epstein was found on July 23. Yet six years later, when an FBI agent searched Sentinel for a documented interview of him, the search came up empty.
The email chain contains no follow up about the missing interview. Instead, the discussion shifted to compiling allegations against prominent individuals. There is no instruction to locate the interview or determine why it could not be be found in the FBI’s case management system. The subject changed and has never returned.
Where The Trail Ends
On the morning of July 24, 2025, the FBI’s New York field office discovered that no documented interview of Epstein’s cellmate existed in its case management system. Within thirty-one minutes, the same email chain pivoted to compiling victim allegations against thirteen men whose names included the sitting president’s, a sitting cabinet secretary’s, a former attorney general’s, and a member of the British royal family. That compilation was produced the same morning the deputy attorney general sat down to interview the only living person convicted of helping Epstein traffic children. A version reached the FBI director two weeks later. The FBI director then told Congress there was no credible information that Epstein trafficked to anyone besides himself.
The woman sitting beside Maxwell during that interview was the same attorney who has represented the Maxwell family since 1991, who received $100,000 from Maxwell eight days before Epstein died, and who has never spoken publicly about any of it.
Maxwell was transferred to a minimum security prison camp one week later.
The interview of the cellmate is still missing.
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Primary Sources
EFTA01648951-53, FBI internal email chain, “Epstein - Cellmate Interview,” July 24, 2025.
EFTA01648946-49, FBI internal email chain with Clinton/Blair addition, July 24, 2025.
EFTA01648956, FBI internal email requesting Maxwell-specific victim allegations, July 24, 2025.
EFTA01648957-58, FBI case summary, United States v. Maxwell, prepared July 25, 2025.
EFTA01648959, FBI victim allegations summary focusing on Maxwell, July 25, 2025.
EFTA01648960/62, FBI arrest report and warrant, arrest of Ghislaine Maxwell, July 2, 2020.
EFTA01648961, FBI photograph of cell phone wrapped in tin foil, Bradford NH, July 2, 2020.
EFTA01649070, Amanda Gildea email re: ID review spreadsheet, March 19, 2025.
WCTV (Tallahassee), exclusive drone footage of Maxwell transport, July 24-25, 2025.
NPR, Roger Sollenberger, reporting on withheld Trump-accuser interview memos, February-March 2026.
House Oversight Democrats, letter to BOP Director William Marshall III, August 1, 2025.
Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Kash Patel testimony, September 16, 2025.
LPF Previous Reporting: ‘Leah Saffian: The Maxwell Family Lawyer’
LPF Previous Reporting: ‘The Maxwell Files: The Family Business.’
LPF Previous Reporting: ‘Samantha Harris Said Maxwell’s Lawyer Coached Her. Here’s What Checks Out.
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Because scores of wealthy Republicans—including Donald Trump—are identified as pedophiles in the Epstein files, Republicans restrict access to the files in an attempt to protect Donald Trump and his Billionaire friends who fund Republican campaigns.
Regardless of Party affiliation, every customer, every associate, and every guest, of Jeffrey Epstein that trafficked, or pimped, or raped a child —and every employee of every government entity who knew of the rapes and covered them up—should be identified, indicted, prosecuted, convicted, and thrown into prison. And that includes President Donald Trump, just fired Attorney General, Pam Bondi, and Interim Attorney General, Todd Blanche.
Multiple courts found Donald Trump liable for the sexual assault of E. Jean Carroll. After losing multiple appeals, the judgement of the court stands: Trump raped and defamed E. Jean Carroll, and was ordered, to pay his victim $5,000,000.00 in damages plus $625,005,48 in accrued interest. The court transferred Trump’s funds to his victim.
In addition to another successful defamation lawsuit filed by E. Jean Carroll (which is now under appeal), America’s convicted criminal President stands accused of:
(1) the sexual assault of 26 adult women.
(2) the slapping and violent rape of a 13-year-old child provided to him by his good friends—the pedophile sex traffickers, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
(3) the rape of a child described by the victim in three FBI depositions—(taken under oath)—that between 13 and 15 years of age, she was raped by Donald Trump. These sworn depositions are now in the hands of both the DOJ and Congress.
Interim Attorney General, Todd Blanche, has not investigated Donald Trump for the rapes. Blanche, one of Trump’s personal attorneys, has announced that under his direction the Department of Justice will continue to ignore the law passed by Congress on November 18, 2025 that directed the Department of Justice to release all of the Epstein files no later than December 19, 2025.
In direct violation of this law, half of the Epstein files were withheld from Congress by the DOJ during Pam Bondi’s tenure as Attorney General. Todd Blanche has made clear his intent to continue the coverup.
If—(in the millions of pages of documents the DOJ refuses to release to Congress)—Bondi and Blanche have concealed evidence that Donald Trump is guilty of raping children, they must be criminally charged for their coverups.
PREDICTION: Evidence of Trump’s crimes against children will surface and topple the Trump Family Crime Syndicate; Trump, Bondi and Blanche will be prosecuted, convicted and thrown into prison.
Write now young children and sick seniors are having their already measley SNAP benefits cancelled while our tax dollars are paying the salaries, pensions, security details, and healthcare for the likes of Patel, Barr, and Blanche. Any senator who has voted or will vote to confirm is a collaborator in the ONGOING abuse of the 1000+ survivors. I keep waiting for an FBI or SDNY whistleblower and then realize how dead they'd be.