Photo: Getty Images
Ghislaine Maxwell's appeal to her criminal conviction in relation to recruiting and grooming underage girls for sexual abuse by late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was rejected by the Supreme Court on Monday (October 6), keeping her conviction on three counts and 20-year prison sentence in place, NBC News reports.
Maxwell's attorney, David Oscar Markus, argued that an agreement Epstein made with prosecutors in Florida in which a then-U.S. attorney vowed not to prosecute him or his co-conspirators should've applied to one of the three counts Maxwell faced in her own case prosecuted in New York.
"We’re, of course, deeply disappointed that the Supreme Court declined to hear Ghislaine Maxwell’s case," Markus said in a statement obtained by NBC News.
"But this fight isn’t over. Serious legal and factual issues remain, and we will continue to pursue every avenue available to ensure that justice is done," he added.
Maxwell's appeal faced the issue of whether the non-prosecution agreement only applied in the district in which it was negotiated or whether it could be considered federally. The Justice Department reportedly asked the Supreme Court to reject Maxwell's appeal, with Solicitor General D. John Sauer acknowledging that the U.S. attorney would have to obtain permission from superiors if an agreement was to apply outside his district and there was no evidence that such occurred.
Maxwell was convicted of three counts for her role as the longtime confidant and recruiter for Epstein's sexual abuse in 2022, having befriended girls, some as young as 14 years old, and assisted in transporting them to Epstein's residences. Maxwell was recently moved from Federal Correctional Institution Tallahassee to Federal Prison Camp Bryan after speaking with the Department of Justice about Epstein.
Federal Prison Camp Bryan typically houses nonviolent offenders and is less restrictive than the Tallahassee federal prison.
President Donald Trump, whose name reportedly appeared seven times in Epstein's flight logs, and his administration have recently faced scrutiny for not releasing more information about the Epstein files, which led to the president publicly directing U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to release "pertinent" grand jury testimony. On July 16, Quinnipiac University released a poll showing a majority of Americans (63%) disapproved how Trump and his administration had handled the Epstein files.
Maxwell reportedly told the Trump-appointed Justice Department that the president was "never inappropriate with anybody" during his friendship with Epstein, according to audio and transcripts obtained by the New York Post on August 22.
The Department of Justice previously handed over an annotated version of the Maxwell grand jury transcripts showing that "much of the information provided during the course of the grand jury testimony -- with the exception of the identities of certain victims and witnesses -- was made publicly available at trial or has otherwise been publicly reported through the public statements of victims and witnesses," according to the filing via ABC News.