US President Donald Trump has left the door open to a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of helping the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse teenage girls.

Trump also said that Sean “Diddy” Combs, who was sentenced last Friday to more than four years in prison over his conviction on prostitution-related charges, had requested a pardon.

On the same day the US Supreme Court declined to hear Maxwell’s bid to overturn her conviction, Trump, when asked whether he would set Maxwell free himself through a pardon, said he would speak to the Department of Justice.

“I haven’t heard the name in so long. I can say this, that I’d have to take a look at it. I would have to take a look,” he said.

“I will speak to the DOJ.”

The Epstein case has dogged Trump and his Justice Department for months. It has particularly exercised his Make America Great Again political base, which has been unusually critical of the administration for not releasing more information about Epstein’s crimes and alleged associates.

Trump and Epstein were friends but fell out. Epstein died in a Manhattan cell in 2019, while in jail awaiting sentencing on child sex-trafficking charges.

Issuing a pardon to Maxwell would carry political risk for Trump. His supporters and his Democratic opponents have repeatedly demanded the administration release files from the Justice Department’s Epstein probe.

Trump said a lot of people asked him for pardons and referenced Combs.

“I call him ‘Puff Daddy’, [he] has asked me for a pardon,” he said.

Maxwell was indicted in a New York court in 2020 for crimes associated with Epstein’s decades-long scheme to groom women and girls as young as 14.

During her month-long trial in 2021, survivors testified in federal courtn that Maxwell had groomed them, taken their passports, and sexually abused them.

Maxwell lawyer, David Oscar Markus, told Britain’s Independent newspaper that her legal team was “deeply disappointed” that the court had declined to hear her case.

“But this fight isn’t over. Serious legal and factual issues remain, and we will continue to pursue every avenue available to ensure that justice is done,” he said.

Maxwell, who is now 63, is not scheduled to be released from prison until 2040. Her best chance of early release is a presidential pardon.

Maxwell was interviewed by US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche – ­the No.2 official in the US Department of Justice – in August.

Two weeks after that, she was moved from a federal prison in Florida to a prison camp in Texas – described as “the difference between double-fenced barbed wire and a wrought-iron fence akin to that of a gated community”.

-with AAP