A federal judge forcefully rejected Ghislaine Maxwell’s attempt to vacate her conviction and sentence for helping Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse underage girls, ruling Tuesday that her claims of constitutional violations were “frivolous.”
U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer in New York wrote in an opinion that nothing in Maxwell’s “lengthy and rambling” petition — filed in December without assistance from lawyers — offered support to reconsider her five felony convictions or 20-year federal prison sentence.
“Her petition’s claims are demonstrably meritless, and generally based on speculation, distortions, and/or outright falsehoods,” Engelmayer wrote. “There is no fact that Maxwell fairly puts in dispute that has any potential to disturb the outcome of her trial.”
Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime accomplice and former romantic partner, was convicted in 2021 of helping Epstein groom, traffic and coerce minors into sex with the late sex offender and well-connected financier. Epstein died in federal custody in 2019 while facing federal sex-trafficking charges in what was ruled a suicide.
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Maxwell was initially imprisoned in a federal detention center in Florida, but the Justice Department last year transferred Maxwell to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas known for its lax conditions. The move came shortly after Todd Blanche, then the deputy attorney general, interviewed Maxwell in Tallahassee amid uproar over the Justice Department’s handling of files in the Epstein case.
Maxwell had sought a new trial and appealed her sentence and conviction without success. The Supreme Court declined to take up her case last year.
Maxwell’s latest petition contained dozens of claims about what she said were errors and violations of her rights surrounding her trial in New York in 2021 and subsequent sentencing — none of which the judge found convincing.
In his bluntly-worded 67-page ruling, Engelmayer said Maxwell repeatedly misinterpreted legal issues, tacked irrelevant exhibits onto her filings and raised baseless arguments about how prosecutors handled her case. She also missed deadlines and raised claims that were barred under court procedure.
In one claim, Maxwell argued she was selectively prosecuted, saying the Justice Department could have charged alleged co-conspirators or other men who entered into settlements with Epstein’s victims. The judge said that was “patently frivolous.”
“Maxwell served for years as Epstein’s indispensable recruiter and groomer in chief. She does not point to any other person who abetted Epstein in this manner or to this degree,” he wrote. “On the contrary, Maxwell has not implicated any other person in the child sex abuse scheme.”
She also argued that documents in the trove of Epstein files released by the Justice Department showed that prosecutors had failed to turn over evidence that could have helped prove her innocence.
The judge disagreed, saying that, if anything, the materials showed that the prosecution team “went above and beyond its disclosure obligations.”
Another of Maxwell’s claims accused prosecutors of improperly colluding with victims’ attorneys and manipulating them into bringing the charges against her.
The judge said prosecutors had acted appropriately in meeting with victims and their counsel.
“Prosecutors’ conferral with and receipt of information from witnesses, victims, and other private actors — directly or through their counsel — is commonplace in the building of a criminal case and the preparation for a criminal trial,” the judge wrote. “It does not transform such persons into members of the prosecution team.”
The judge noted that many of Maxwell’s claims had already been rejected by previous judges, and that she failed to raise others earlier in the proceedings. He denied her request for an evidentiary hearing on her arguments.
A Maxwell attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
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