The Latest Chapter in the Ghislaine Maxwell Saga

When we left convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell, she had just received several remarkable gifts from the Trump administration.

First, while serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking minors as Jeffrey Epstein’s procurer, she got an unprecedented meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the second highest official in the Justice Department. Blanche was also U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer in the hush-money trial resulting in his 34 felony convictions. That such a meeting even occurred astonished legal observers across the political spectrum.

Second, only a week later, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Prisons transferred Maxwell out of the Florida Correctional Institution in Tallahassee, a minimum security prison with horrendous conditions. Her new home is the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas—a “Club Fed” that houses white-collar criminals and celebrities who have far better living quarters and relative freedom of movement.

The Plot Thickens

Now independent journalist and podcast host Allison Gill (“Mueller, She Wrote” on Bluesky) reports, “I have Ghislaine Maxwell’s security score, custody level, transfer code, public safety factor, and sex offender waiver.”

If accurate, Gill’s information confirms my earlier observation that sex offenders are not eligible for placement in a federal prison camp. Someone has to waive such a prisoner’s mandatory “public safety factor” that would otherwise bar a transfer to one.

Gill also notes, “What stands out here is the custody level ‘OUT,’ which allows her to leave the minimum security campus for work assignments.” [Italics in original]

Déjà Vu?

In some respects, Maxwell is following in the footsteps of her mentor. In June 2008, federal prosecutors in Florida had identified 31 victims whom it was prepared to name in an indictment of Jeffrey Epstein. President George W. Bush’s deputy attorney general had determined that federal prosecution of Epstein was appropriate.

But then-U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Alex Acosta negotiated a non-prosecution agreement with Epstein’s high-powered lawyers. The federal charges were dropped. In return, Epstein pleaded guilty to two state charges: one count of solicitation of prostitution and one count of solicitation of prostitution with a minor under the age of 18.

I predict that Trump will now blame the courts for his own lack of transparency.

Epstein served a 13-month sentence in a private wing of a Palm Beach jail. He was allowed to leave 12 hours a day, six days a week, to work out of a nearby office. After his release, he resumed sex trafficking in minors with Maxwell as his coconspirator. In 2019, Epstein was indicted on new federal charges.

Acosta had agreed to keep the non-prosecution agreement confidential. In 2019, a federal judge ruled that prosecutors had violated the victims’ rights by failing to notify them of the plea deal. By then, Acosta was secretary of labor in Trump’s first administration. After revelation of his role in the earlier Epstein plea deal, he fresigned.

Meanwhile, A Courageous Judge Exposed Trump’s Latest Ploy

Trump has tried desperately to walk away from the Epstein conspiracy theories that he had pushed to energize his MAGA base. But nothing has worked. As the MAGA core cracked, pressure mounted and he made a hollow pledge: Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to seek the courts’ permission to release grand jury materials relating to Epstein and Maxwell.

As I observed previously, that was a head fake toward transparency because: 1) grand jury materials are a tiny slice of the Justice Department’s files on Epstein; and 2) the courts could refuse to release anything at all.

And the courts have done just that. So far, Bondi is now 0-for-2 in her effort to obtain judicial release of the Epstein-Maxwell grand jury materials.

Bondi’s latest rebuke came on August 11 in New York. In a blistering opinion, Judge Paul A. Engelmayer called out Trump’s subterfuge. The court observed that the “special circumstances” required for releasing Maxwell’s grand jury materials are not present:

The Government’s invocation of special circumstances, however, fails at the threshold. Its entire premise—that the Maxwell grand jury materials would bring to light meaningful new information about Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes, or the Government’s investigation into them—is demonstrably false.

The court continued:

A member of the public familiar with the Maxwell trial record who reviewed the grand jury materials that the Government proposes to unseal would thus learn next to nothing new.

Turning the government’s words back on it, the judge ruled:

A “public official,” “lawmaker,” “pundit,” or “ordinary citizen” “deeply interested and concerned about the Epstein matter,” Motion to Unseal at 3, and who reviewed these materials expecting, based on the Government’s representations, to learn new information about Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes and the investigation into them, would come away feeling disappointed and misled. There is no “there” there.

Judge Engelmayer’s most insightful and telling passage was also his most direct:

The one colorable argument under that doctrine for unsealing in this case, in fact, is that doing so would expose as disingenuous the Government’s public explanations for moving to unseal. A member of the public, appreciating that the Maxwell grand jury materials do not contribute anything to public knowledge, might conclude that the Government’s motion for their unsealing was aimed not at “transparency” but at diversion—aimed not at full disclosure but at the illusion of such.

Judge Engelmayer’s powerful condemnation is remarkable. He blasted Bondi’s attempt to use the court as a vehicle for Trump’s deflection, distraction, and diversion playbook.

Another federal judge in New York is considering the Justice Department’s request to release Epstein’s grand jury materials. I predict that Bondi goes 0-for-3.

I predict that Trump will now blame the courts for his own lack of transparency.

And I predict that the Ghislaine Maxwell scandal will live on….