Federal judge rejects Ghislaine Maxwell's 'miscarriage of justice'
claims and bid for prison release
[August 26, 2026]
By MICHAEL R. SISAK and LARRY NEUMEISTER
NEW YORK (AP) — Ghislaine Maxwell's bid to overturn her sex trafficking
conviction and be freed from prison was rejected by a federal judge
Tuesday who said the claims by Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend and
longtime associate that new evidence had emerged were “demonstrably
meritless.”
Maxwell filed a habeas petition last December seeking to set aside her
conviction and free her from a 20-year prison sentence, claiming
exonerating information was withheld and false testimony presented at
her trial, resulting in a “complete miscarriage of justice.”
Judge Paul A. Engelmayer rejected her arguments, saying in his written
ruling they “all or almost all are frivolous” and that she had presented
nothing that could upend the outcome of her trial.
“Nearly all its claims are procedurally barred; the overwhelming
testimonial and documentary evidence adduced at trial conclusively
established her guilt; and her petition’s claims are demonstrably
meritless, and generally based on speculation, distortions, and/or
outright falsehoods,” Engelmayer wrote.
A request for comment was sent to lawyers who represented Maxwell in the
past.
Habeas petitions are often filed as a last resort and to protect against
unlawful confinement after appeals are exhausted, as happened after
Maxwell’s conviction and sentencing.
Epstein, a millionaire financier, was arrested in July 2019 on sex
trafficking charges. Ordered detained until trial, he was found dead in
his cell at a New York federal jail in August 2019 and his death was
ruled a suicide.
Maxwell, a British socialite, was arrested a year later and was
convicted of sex trafficking in December 2021. She was moved from a
Florida prison to a prison camp in Texas last year, shortly after she
was interviewed by the Justice Department’s then second-in-command, Todd
Blanche, President Donald Trump's former criminal defense attorney and
now U.S. attorney general.
The judge noted that many of Maxwell's claims of “new evidence” stem
from documents released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
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Audrey Strauss, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of
New York, points to a photo of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell
during a news conference in New York on July 2, 2020. (AP Photo/John
Minchillo, File)
As a result of that law, the Justice Department over the last eight
months has released 18 categories of investigative materials
gathered in the massive sex trafficking probe, including search
warrants, financial records, notes from interviews with victims and
data from electronic devices.
Engelmayer said that material is “largely irrelevant to the charges
against Maxwell and does not support her claims of error.”
“On the contrary, to the extent it is relevant, far from exculpating
her, it incriminates her or reinforces the correctness of the legal
rulings Maxwell challenges,” he wrote.
The judge also rejected Maxwell's claim that she was selectively
prosecuted and made a “scapegoat” when the Justice Department did
not indict four co-conspirators named in a government document or 25
men who settled with victims.
Engelmayer said she could have raised that claim on appeal after her
trial, but he found it to be frivolous nonetheless.
Among the recently released Justice Department documents, “she does
not cite any that reveals the existence of an uncharged confederate,
let alone one as instrumental as she in facilitating Epstein’s
horrific crimes,” the judge said.
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