Ghislaine Maxwell files Supreme Court brief appealing Epstein conviction

Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime associate and former girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to hear her appeal and overturn her sex-trafficking conviction, arguing she was protected by a non-prosecution agreement Epstein struck with federal authorities years earlier.

“This case is about what the government promised, not what Epstein did,” her attorneys wrote in a newly filed brief to the justices.

Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison, handed down in 2022 for her role in a years-long scheme with Epstein to groom and sexually abuse underage girls. She has recently sat for questioning by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche amid intensifying political scrutiny over how the Trump administration handled Epstein-related files.

However, those discussions were not referenced in her latest filing to the Court.

“President Trump built his legacy in part on the power of a deal – and surely he would agree that when the United States gives its word, it must stand by it,” said David Oscar Markus, Maxwell’s attorney, in a statement. “We are appealing not only to the Supreme Court but to the president himself to recognize how profoundly unjust it is to scapegoat Ghislaine Maxwell for Epstein’s crimes, especially when the government promised she would not be prosecuted.”

In her appeal—initially filed in April—Maxwell contends she should have been shielded from prosecution under the terms of Epstein’s controversial non-prosecution agreement, which was secured in Florida as part of his 2008 guilty plea. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected that argument, ruling that the deal with Florida prosecutors did not extend to federal authorities in New York, who ultimately charged Maxwell.

Maxwell’s legal team maintains that federal appeals courts have taken inconsistent stances on whether such non-prosecution agreements are binding across jurisdictions, and that the issue is ripe for Supreme Court review. The Court is expected to decide this fall whether it will take up the case.

“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,” Maxwell’s team argued in the brief. “Of course, if wishful thinking were the standard, the whole NPA would have been thrown out long ago.”

Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to state prostitution charges and was federally indicted on sex trafficking charges in July 2019, only to die by suicide in jail a month later.

The Trump administration has continued to defend Maxwell’s conviction at the Supreme Court, even as the Justice Department has held closed-door meetings with her during the growing uproar over the handling of Epstein-related documents.

“Petitioner was not a party to the relevant agreement,” the DOJ stated in its own brief to the high court, filed on July 14. “Only Epstein and the Florida USAO were parties.”