Todd Blanche, the acting US attorney general, told lawmakers on Tuesday that he would not recommend a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex-trafficking crimes.

Blanche’s comments came during a Senate hearing on Tuesday, where he was testifying before the appropriations subcommittee over budget requests for the justice department.

During one exchange, Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, asked Blanche whether the justice department, and he as the acting attorney general, could commit to not recommending a pardon for Maxwell.

“Yes, I can commit to that, of course,” Blanche, who is a former personal lawyer for Trump, responded.

The statement comes as Maxwell exhausted a series of appeals of her conviction, with the US supreme court in October declining to hear her petition.

Earlier this year, Maxwell appeared before the House oversight and reform committee but invoked her fifth amendment right and refused to answer the panel’s questions. Her attorney told lawmakers that she would only speak if granted clemency.

And in April, reports emerged that members of the committee were divided over whether Trump should consider pardoning Maxwell in exchange for her cooperation in the panel’s Epstein investigation.

Last year, as the Trump administration faced growing pressure to release more documents related to the Epstein investigation, it dispatched Blanche, who was deputy attorney general at the time, to interview Maxwell about the Epstein case. The interview, conducted over two days in July, was followed by the justice department releasing the transcripts and audio recordings.

Shortly after that meeting, in August, Maxwell was transferred from a low-security prison in Tallahassee, Florida, to a minimum-security camp in Texas, where most prisoners are serving time for non-violent offenses and white-collar crimes. At the time, experts described the move as “unprecedented”.

Since then, reports have surfaced that Maxwell is “much happier” at the Texas facility than she was at her previous prison, and there have been allegations that she is receiving favorable treatment.

During Tuesday’s hearing, Blanche denied that Trump personally sent him to interview Maxwell and claimed he didn’t know whether she was receiving better treatment at her new facility.

The possibility clemency for Maxwell, however unlikely, has long outraged survivors and their advocates.

Earlier this month, Spencer Kuvin, chief legal officer and litigation director of Goldlaw, which has represented numerous Epstein survivors, told the Guardian that “any talk of clemency for Ghislaine Maxwell in exchange for testimony turns justice on its head – it risks rewarding the very person who helped enable the abuse”.

A representative for Maxwell did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Blanche’s statements.