A federal judge has rejected Ghislaine Maxwell’s “lengthy and rambling” attempt to throw out her sex trafficking convictions after she claimed new evidence released by the Department of Justice in connection with her associate Jeffrey Epstein proved her rights at trial and sentencing were violated. Most of her arguments, which she filed herself while imprisoned, were already turned down in appeals courts, while the alleged “new” evidence from the Justice Department’s Epstein files are “largely irrelevant" to her case, the judge said. 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.
In October, the Supreme Court declined to review whether prosecutors fairly brought a case against her. Last year, President Donald 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 also interviewed Maxwell as part of the 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. She argued her 2021 conviction should be rendered “invalid, unsafe and infirm,” she wrote earlier this year.
After the release of millions of documents and images in connection with investigations into Epstein and Maxwell, Maxwell argued that “further factual development is necessary.” But her arguments are nearly all “procedurally barred” from being put forward at this stage, after “the overwhelming testimonial and documentary evidence” at trial “conclusively established her guilt,” Judge Engelmayer wrote Tuesday. Her petition’s claims “are demonstrably meritless, and generally based on speculation, distortions, and/or outright falsehoods,” he added.
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