Supreme Court Rejects Ghislaine Maxwell’s Appeal For Sex Trafficking Minors

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear Ghislaine Maxwell’s appeal to overturn her 2022 conviction for sex trafficking minors with Jeffrey Epstein.

Maxwell, who was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison, had sought to overturn her conviction on the grounds that she was unlawfully prosecuted. She filed her appeal three days after meeting with a top Trump DOJ official tapped to re-examine the Epstein case. 

Now it’s down to a Trump pardon – after the President said in late July that he hadn’t considered, but won’t rule out, a pardon for his former Palm Beach associate. 

Trump supporters have suggested that Maxwell, a British former socialite and daughter of alleged Mossad spy Robert Maxwell (Ghislaine has denied Epstein was running a honeypot operation to entrap elites) – could be the key to exposing a list of powerful Epstein clients. Then, when Trump started acting all weird about it – calling the list a ‘Democrat hoax’ – a fracture formed within MAGA, as supporters were counting on Trump to release ‘the list,’ not act like he’s on it. 

Maxwell’s legal team is crestfallen.

“We’re, of course, deeply disappointed that the Supreme Court declined to hear Ghislaine Maxwell’s case,” her attorney, David Oscar Markus, said in a statement provided to Axios. “But this fight isn’t over.”

“Serious legal and factual issues remain,” he said, “and we will continue to pursue every avenue available to ensure that justice is done.”

Maxwell claimed in her appeal that she was wrongly prosecuted because she’s covered by a 2007 sweetheart non-prosecution deal negotiated with the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Florida. According to said agreement, the US “agrees that it will not institute any criminal charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein, including but not limited to” four other suspects. 

Maxwell was not listed as one of those suspects, however her lawyers claim she didn’t need to be. 

The DOJ, meanwhile, has argued that the former US Attorney who negotiated the deal, Alex Acosta, didn’t have the authority to bind federal districts – including the Southern District of New York, where Maxwell was tried and convicted.