Judge rejects Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking appeal, calling claims ‘demonstrably meritless’

A federal judge has rejected Ghislaine Maxwell’s legal effort to throw out her 2021 conviction on sex-trafficking charges and 20-year prison sentence, calling her claims “demonstrably meritless, and generally based on speculation, distortions, and/or outright falsehoods”.

In a 67-page decision filed on Tuesday, US district judge Paul Engelmayer for New York’s southern district denied the former British socialite’s petition for relief, finding that Maxwell had failed to make a substantial showing that her constitutional rights were denied when she was convicted for her role in crimes linked to late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Maxwell, who is serving out her punishment at a minimum-security prison camp in Bryan, Texas, had petitioned the court to vacate her conviction on grounds that there were issues at her trial, including a juror who later revealed he was a sexual abuse victim and evidence she alleged was not made available to her defense team.

Her petition, which came before the massive Epstein-related document dump by the federal government, also raised the 2007 non-prosecution agreement between federal prosecutors in Miami and Epstein, which she claimed protected her from prosecution. Maxwell was not named in that agreement.

In the decision denying the petition, Engelmayer wrote that the “vast majority” of grounds on which Maxwell made her appeal “are procedurally barred – either because Maxwell made and lost the same arguments on direct appeal, or because she could have made such arguments on appeal but elected not to do so”.

The judge also rejected that new evidence had come through the Trump administration-led US justice department’s multimillion page release of documents. Those, Engelmayer said, “incriminates her or reinforces the correctness of the legal rulings Maxwell challenges”.

Maxwell previously lost an attempt to overturn her conviction, centered on the government’s non-prosecution agreement with Epstein, in the US supreme court when the justices declined to hear her appeal.

Maxwell was also interviewed by then-deputy attorney general Todd Blanche after pressure mounted on the Trump administration over its handling of documents relating to the Epstein investigation. Officials say Epstein committed suicide while awaiting trial in August 2019, during the first presidency of Donald Trump, a former friend of Epstein.

A separate investigation by the US House oversight and government reform committee called Maxwell into testify in a virtual appearance before lawmakers. Maxwell invoked her constitutional right against self-incrimination and refused to answer questions – but her lawyer said she would cooperate if she was first granted clemency by Trump.

David Markus, Maxwell’s attorney, said Maxwell had to remain silent because of a pending legal petition filed with the federal court in New York. That petition has now failed.

After the US supreme court declined to hear Maxwell’s appeal, Trump said he would “take a look at” any petition for clemency that comes before him. “I wouldn’t consider it or not consider it,” he said. “I don’t know anything about it.”