In 2020, Ghislaine Maxwell was finally apprehended and taken into custody. There was a two-year ordeal of pre-trial motions, the trial itself and sentencing. At the end of all of it, Ghislaine was sentenced to twenty years in prison for her role in Jeffrey Epstein’s trafficking operation. Many victims also testified that Ghislaine had abused them as well, and that she was the one ordering trafficked girls to go to certain places with certain men. Well, now the Trump administration has declared that there is no “Epstein client list” and it’s all blown up in their faces. The Trump DOJ is panicking and looking for a way out. The way out might be through Ghislaine. DOJ officials gave Ghislaine “limited immunity” to speak about Epstein’s operation, and it’s more than likely that Trump will end pardoning Ghislaine if she does what she’s supposed to do. But Ghislaine might be trying to out-maneuver Trump? Is that what this is?

Attorneys for Ghislaine Maxwell, the imprisoned associate of deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein, on Monday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal of her sex-trafficking conviction and accused the Trump administration of making inaccurate, distracting claims in court papers.

Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021, has said she was improperly prosecuted by federal officials. She contends her case should not have proceeded, saying a plea agreement Epstein signed in 2008 to resolve allegations that he molested dozens of girls prohibited charges against potential co-conspirators. The Justice Department recently said the widely criticized Epstein plea agreement, which was signed in South Florida, governed potential prosecutions only in that specific district and did not extend to New York, where Maxwell was indicted.

In a court filing Monday, Maxwell’s attorneys criticized the Trump administration’s response to Maxwell’s petition, saying federal officials were making meritless arguments to sidestep “the plain meaning” of the Epstein agreement.

“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,” they wrote. Her attorneys also said the administration was seeking “to distract by reciting a lurid and irrelevant account of Jeffrey Epstein’s misconduct.”

[From WaPo]

While the timing is certainly notable, I’ve been covering this situation long enough to know that Ghislaine has long argued a version of this excuse – that while she committed crimes, she did so on Epstein’s behalf and her crimes were covered in Epstein’s 2008 “sweetheart deal” with the feds. Then why did the FBI re-arrest Epstein in 2019, Ghislaine? Granted, this case is crazy complicated and full of thousands of conspiracies, unexplained deaths and legal quagmires. So I don’t know what she’s doing here – maybe she thinks that the pro-Trump Supreme Court will take kindly to an old human trafficker. What’s worse is that SCOTUS probably will take kindly to her argument at this point.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.