By Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK, June 24 (Reuters) – Ghislaine Maxwell argued in a new court filing that Jeffrey Epstein documents released this year contained evidence her rights were violated before she was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison for helping the late financier sexually abuse teenage girls.
Maxwell, 64, has been challenging her December 2021 conviction and sentence in Manhattan federal court, and is seeking a writ of habeas corpus declaring her punishment unlawful. Prosecutors said her latest claims were baseless or filed too late.
In her amended petition made public on Wednesday, Maxwell said many documents disclosed through the Epstein Files Transparency Act show that her due process rights were violated because lawyers representing Epstein’s accusers served as “De Facto Prosecutors and agents of the government.”
The former British socialite and Epstein girlfriend cited among other things a letter from a former federal prosecutor who said, “I did what I could” to help the women’s lawyers, in an alleged attempt to set aside Epstein’s controversial 2007 non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors in Florida.
Maxwell has repeatedly argued unsuccessfully that Epstein’s agreement shielded her from criminal prosecution.
Her habeas petition represents her broadest effort to overturn her conviction, the most significant successful prosecution to emerge from the Epstein scandal.
She drew on some of the millions of pages of documents released under the Epstein files law, which U.S. President Donald Trump signed in November following near-unanimous congressional approval.
U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer oversees Maxwell’s case, and will review her petition.
US SAYS MAXWELL’S CONVICTION, SENTENCE WERE FAIR
U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton in Manhattan, whose office prosecuted Maxwell, said she filed most of her claims too late, while those filed on time were speculative at best, misstated the record or the law, or failed to show her trial was unfair.
“In short, the defendant — for multiple, independent reasons — utterly fails to carry her burden to overturn her proper conviction and just sentence,” Clayton said in a court filing also made public on Wednesday.
A spokesperson for some lawyers representing Epstein accusers had no immediate comment.
Maxwell is representing herself in seeking to overturn her conviction on five charges for recruiting and grooming underage girls for Epstein to abuse between 1994 and 2004.
An earlier appeal focused on Epstein’s non-prosecution agreement, which led to his 2008 guilty plea on a Florida state prostitution charge. He was sentenced to 13 months in jail, a punishment now widely considered too lenient.
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected that appeal in October.
MAXWELL SAYS LAX PROSECUTORS LED TO ‘UNSAFE’ CONVICTION
In her amended petition, Maxwell also objected to prosecutors’ alleged “failure to follow witnesses and the evidence.”
She cited among other things their failure to interview Leslie Wexner, the retail billionaire behind Victoria’s Secret who hired Epstein to manage his personal finances.
Wexner, 88, told Congress in February that he severed ties with Epstein in 2007 and had no knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activity.
Maxwell said the newly released materials showed that prosecutors failed to do “any real investigation of their own,” leading to “misrepresentations to judges and the jury resulting in an unsafe conviction.”
The petition also alleged other grounds to overturn Maxwell’s conviction, including gaps in witness testimony and government suppression of evidence.
A federal judge delayed the release of Maxwell’s amended petition so prosecutors could make redactions to preserve the anonymity of Epstein’s victims.
Epstein died at age 66 in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019, five weeks after being arrested on sex trafficking charges. New York City’s medical examiner called the death a suicide.
Maxwell is housed at a minimum security federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas. She is eligible for release in July 2037, when she will be 75.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
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