Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex trafficker and ex-girlfriend of the late Jeffrey Epstein, pleaded with the Supreme Court on Monday to consider her appeal and overturn her conviction, claiming she was covered by a plea agreement Epstein made with federal attorneys that shielded her from prosecution.
Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison in 2022 after being convicted of participating in a yearslong scheme with Epstein to groom and sexually abuse underage girls.
The brief filed Monday with the Supreme Court by Maxwell's attorneys, the husband-and-wife team of David and Mona Markus, is a reply to the government's response to her initial appeal in April.
It focuses on the plea agreement Epstein reached with Alex Acosta, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida. Acosta was labor secretary in President Donald Trump's first term before resigning following Epstein's 2019 arrest on sex trafficking charges.
Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting prostitution and soliciting minors to engage in prostitution and agreed to a sentence of 18 months in prison. The plea deal stated if Epstein "successfully fulfills all of the terms and conditions of this agreement, the United States also agrees that it will not institute any criminal charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein, including but not limited to" four of Epstein's assistants (none of whom was Maxwell).
"This case is about what the government promised, not what Epstein did," the attorneys told the Supreme Court in the brief.
Maxwell's attorneys argued that by promising immunity from "the United States" meant she couldn't be prosecuted for Epstein-related crimes anywhere in the country.
"The government's argument, across the board, is essentially an appeal to what it wishes the agreement had said, rather than what it actually says," the attorneys wrote.
Solicitor General John Sauer wrote July 14 that Maxwell "was not a party to the relevant agreement. Only Epstein and the Florida USAO [U.S. attorney's office] were parties."
But Maxwell's attorneys argued that the agreement "is not geographically limited to the Southern District of Florida, it is not conditioned on the co-conspirators being known by the government at the time, it does not depend on what any particular government attorney may have had in his or her head about who might be a co-conspirator, and it contains no other caveat or exception. This should be the end of the discussion."
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche twice met with Maxwell and her attorneys last week amid calls for the Trump administration to release all documents related to Epstein, who died by what was called suicide while in federal custody in August 2019 while awaiting trial. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform subpoenaed Maxwell last week for a deposition.
Trump said Monday it would be "inappropriate" to discuss the possibility of a pardon for Maxwell.
"Well, I'm allowed to give her a pardon, but nobody's approached me with it," Trump told reporters while meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Scotland. "Nobody's asked me about it. It's in the news about that, that aspect of it. But right now, it would be inappropriate to talk about it."
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.