A federal judge rejected Ghislaine Maxwell’s bid to overturn her sex trafficking conviction and be released from prison, calling her claims that new evidence had emerged “demonstrably meritless.” Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime associate, filed a habeas petition in December arguing that exonerating information had been withheld and false testimony presented at her trial, resulting in what she called a “complete miscarriage of justice.”
Judge Paul A. Engelmayer wrote that her arguments were “all or almost all frivolous” and that she had presented nothing capable of changing the outcome of her trial. Maxwell had also pointed to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law Congress passed mandating release of the Justice Department’s files on Epstein, arguing it supported her innocence claims; Engelmayer found it did not.
Where This Leaves Her Case
Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking. This ruling addresses her habeas petition specifically, a separate legal track from a direct appeal, and comes after the US Supreme Court already declined to hear her appeal of the underlying conviction in October. With both the direct appeal and now this habeas challenge rejected, Maxwell has largely exhausted the standard legal avenues for overturning the conviction itself.
Why the EFTA Argument Didn’t Work
The Epstein Files Transparency Act was written to mandate public disclosure of investigative files, not to establish new grounds for challenging a conviction that was already finalized through trial and appeal. Engelmayer’s rejection of that argument specifically signals that future attempts to use the files’ release as a basis for reopening the case will likely face the same obstacle, regardless of what the disclosed files ultimately contain.
