Ghislanine Maxwell’s Texas prison, dubbed “Club Fed,” has reportedly upped security after taking in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficker.
Maxwell, a disgraced British socialite who was a close associate of Epstein’s for years, is serving a 20-year sentence for her part in a scheme to sexually exploit and abuse minor girls with the wealthy financier.
Epstein, who had pleaded guilty to state sex offenses in 2008, died in jail in 2019 while facing federal sex trafficking charges.
Maxwell was recently moved from a federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida, to a minimum security prison in southeast Texas called Federal Prison Camp Bryan.
FPC Bryan has increased security measures in response to Maxwell’s transfer, NBC News reported Wednesday, citing a senior law enforcement official.
Two prison employees told the outlet members of the federal Bureau of Prisons’ Special Operations Response Team have been positioned outside FPC Bryan’s front entrance since the weekend.
The special ops crew is there to check people’s IDs and wave them through, the employees reportedly said.
It’s unclear if Maxwell has received any direct threats since her move.
The Independent has reached out to the Bureau of Prisons to confirm the reporting, and Maxwell’s lawyer, David Oskar Markus, to ask about her security at the new prison.
Epstein and Maxwell’s names have once again made headlines after the Justice Department and FBI released a memo in early July stating there was no so-called client list of powerful people who may have partaken in Epstein’s crimes; Epstein did, in fact, die by suicide, and “no further disclosure [of information regarding Epstein] would be appropriate or warranted.”
The memo sparked backlash, notably from Trump’s own base, as it left many unanswered questions and concerns the government may be covering up materials that would be of interest to the public.
Amid the Epstein files drama, Trump enlisted the Justice Department to ask the courts for grand jury testimonies in the cases against Epstein and Maxwell and to interview the disgraced socialite.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche met with Maxwell in Florida last month for two days, during which, according to Markus, “She was asked about maybe about 100 different people. She answered questions about everybody and she didn’t hold anything back.”
Maxwell’s transfer to FPC Bryan came shortly after she met with the Justice Department. Experts said she got “special preference” with the move.
“Someone gave special preference to Maxwell that, to my knowledge, no other inmate currently in the Federal Bureau of Prisons has received,” Robert Hood, a former warden of the Florence “supermax” prison in Colorado, told the Washington Post in an article published Tuesday.
When asked if he’d personally approved the transfer, Trump said Tuesday, “I didn’t know about it at all. I read about it just like you did.”
