Ghislaine Maxwell has claimed that 29 friends of Jeffrey Epstein were shielded through ‘secret settlements’ by the Justice Department.
The disgraced socialite filed a habeas corpus petition on December 17 seeking to overturn her conviction, arguing that prosecutors cut deals with Epstein associates while prosecuting her as if no such agreements existed.
Maxwell alleges that 25 men reached undisclosed deals, while four alleged co-conspirators were known to investigators but never charged. She does not name any of the individuals.
‘None of the four named co-conspirators or the 25 men with secret settlements were indicted,’ the court filing says.
Maxwell argues that the alleged concealment of these deals undermined the fairness of her trial and violated her constitutional rights.
‘New evidence reveals that there were 25 men with which the plaintiff lawyers reached secret settlements – that could equally be considered as co-conspirators,’ the legal document states.
‘None of these men have been prosecuted and none has been revealed to Petitioner; she would have called them as witnesses had she known.’
In the sprawling court filing, Maxwell mounts multiple lines of attack forming the basis of her habeas corpus argument, including allegations of juror misconduct and suppression of evidence.
She alleges that prosecutors violated the terms of Epstein’s 2007 non-prosecution agreement in Florida, which she claims extended immunity to co-conspirators.
Maxwell asserts that she was prosecuted for political reasons while other individuals escaped justice.
The 64-year-old is serving a 20-year sentence at Federal Prison Camp Bryan, a minimum-security federal women’s prison in Bryan, Texas.
She was convicted in New York in December 2021 of sex trafficking over her role in recruiting and grooming underage girls for abuse by Epstein between 1994 and 2004.
The Supreme Court last year declined to hear Maxwell’s appeal, leaving her conviction intact.
She has now turned to what lawyers describe as ‘extraordinary relief’ via a habeas corpus petition filed in the Southern District of New York.
The filing seeks to ‘vacate, set aside, or correct’ her sentence based on alleged constitutional violations.
The petition is a rare ‘collateral attack’, permitted only after appeals fail and typically requiring proof of new evidence or fundamental flaws.
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Such challenges only succeed in exceptional cases as judges are wary to avoid endless relitigation.
The Justice Department said on Tuesday in a court filing submitted in New York that it expects to release the Epstein files ‘in the near term.’
Attorney General Pam Bondi said that her lawyers are redacting several million pages of documents from the files of the DOJ, FBI and US attorneys offices.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed into law by Donald Trump in November after a civil war in the Republican Party, required the DOJ to release the files by December 19.
No less than 200 lawyers in the US attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York are involved in the review.
Even prosecutors involved in Nicolas Maduro’s high-profile case have been requisitioned as part of the effort, according to the New York Times.
But the delay in releasing the files has sparked fury on Capitol Hill.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Democrat Ro Khanna of California accused the DOJ of a ‘flagrant violation’ of the law.
Massie and Khanna wrote to Judge Paul Engelmayer, who oversaw Maxwell’s trial in New York, to appoint an independent monitor to ensure the DOJ’s compliance.
Engelmayer denied the request last week, stating that he does not have the authority to supervise the Justice Department.
He added that he had received letters from Epstein victims supporting the representatives’ request, which he said were ‘undeniably important and timely.’
The judge noted that Massie and Khanna could initiate a separate lawsuit or use ‘the tools available to Congress’ to seek DOJ oversight.
