Convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell is asking a judge to revisit a jury’s verdict and her 20-year prison sentence after recently published documents stemming from investigations into Jeffrey Epstein exposed what she believes contain new evidence that vindicates her.
Her 2021 conviction should be rendered “invalid, unsafe and infirm,” she wrote in a newly unsealed court filing.
Maxwell, who is now representing herself in her appeals, was found guilty of recruiting and grooming young women and girls for Epstein, who died by suicide in prison in 2019 while awaiting his own trial on trafficking charges.
With all her appeals exhausted, she filed a new petition for her release inside a USB drive mailed from prison inside a FedEx envelope that was postmarked April 16. Those documents — which contain 60 pages of arguments that Maxwell wrote herself — were unsealed Wednesday night.
A furious, 101-page response from the Department of Justice urged a judge to dismiss what government lawyers described as factually incorrect and legally baseless arguments. Maxwell’s papers also repeatedly allege government misconduct, claims that are “unmoored from law, logic, or the record,” according to a response from Assistant U.S. Attorney Lara Pomerantz in Manhattan.
“Her victims deserve finality,” Pomerantz wrote. “She should not be permitted another attempt to level unsupported, false allegations of Government misconduct, particularly given the length of her papers, and when her request to amend further is conclusory.”
Maxwell, 64, is the only person charged in Epstein’s alleged trafficking conspiracy other than Epstein himself.
She is not scheduled to be released from prison until 2040, and her best chance of early release is a presidential pardon. Her attorney, David Markus, has previously said she would “welcome” one, and Donald Trump has publicly acknowledged he has the power to do so.
In October, the Supreme Court declined to review whether prosecutors fairly brought a case against her. Maxwell was “deeply disappointed,” Markus told The Independent at the time.
“But this fight isn’t over,” he said. “Serious legal and factual issues remain, and we will continue to pursue every avenue available to ensure that justice is done.”
After the release of millions of documents and images in connection with investigations into Epstein and Maxwell, the convicted trafficker now argues that “further factual development is necessary.”
“The petition involves a substantial body of post-trial evidence disclosed years after conviction through a statutory transparency process that did not exist during the underlying proceedings,” Maxwell wrote.
“The Court’s task therefore is not to evaluate each disclosure in isolation, but to consider the cumulative force of a record that is substantially different from the record available during trial, direct appeal, and prior collateral review,” she argued.
In response, the Justice Department condensed her lengthy arguments as an attempt to “sweep away the judgment of conviction representing the solemn verdict of a jury following a four-and-a-half week trial, convicting her for her instrumental role in the horrific sexual abuse of multiple young teenage girls, and the considered 240-month sentence.”
But that “supposedly newly available evidence … affords her no relief,” Pomerantz wrote.
“At bottom, the defendant’s claims — to the extent not barred, and nearly all are — are speculative (at best); rest on a misreading or mischaracterization of the record; fail to establish even potential prejudice, much less the required actual prejudice; and/or rely on a misunderstanding or misstatement of the law,” she wrote.
Maxwell “utterly fails” in her arguments to overturn her conviction and sentence, according to Pomerantz.
Last year, Trump reluctantly agreed to sign a measure approved by Congress that compels the Justice Department to release all investigative materials from the Epstein case in its possession.
Then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche — who Trump has nominated as Attorney General — also interviewed Maxwell as part of that Justice Department’s revived investigations into Epstein-related cases. Shortly after the interview last summer, Maxwell was transferred to a minimum-security women’s prison in Texas.
In December, she filed a petition for her release from prison, citing “substantial new evidence” had emerged in her case, alleging constitutional violations that she believes undermined her right to a fair trial.
U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer had declined Maxwell’s request for the Justice Department to send her the so-called Epstein files, leaving her with what she called an “almost impossible task” of relying on media reports about them.
If her latest move fails, her best bet at getting out of jail is a pardon from the president.
While the president and his administration are eager to wind down investigations surrounding Epstein and federal law enforcement’s handling of the cases against him and Maxwell, members of Congress are separately investigating an alleged network of powerful abusers connected to them.
Maxwell, however, has refused to voluntarily testify to Congress without assurances that she can receive some form of clemency.
In a letter to the House Oversight Committee last year, her legal team asked for immunity protections — and made another appeal to Trump for clemency.
“If Ms. Maxwell were to receive clemency, she would be willing — and eager — to testify openly and honestly, in public, before Congress in Washington, D.C.,” according to the letter, which Maxwell’s attorneys provided to The Independent at the time. “She welcomes the opportunity to share the truth and to dispel the many misconceptions and misstatements that have plagued this case from the beginning.”
Blanche, however, told members of Congress last month that he will not recommend a pardon.
“I can commit to that, of course,” he said.
