Ghislaine Maxwell Launches Legal Bid to Overturn Conviction as Epstein Files Released
Breaking Development in High-Profile Case
Ghislaine Maxwell, former girlfriend and accomplice of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, has asked a federal judge in the United States to set aside her sex trafficking conviction and quash her 20-year prison sentence. Maxwell made the long-shot legal bid in a Manhattan court on Wednesday, saying “substantial new evidence” had emerged proving that constitutional violations spoiled her trial in 2021 for recruiting underage girls for wealthy financier Epstein, who died in 2019.
What Maxwell is Claiming
Having run out of the typical avenues for appeal, Maxwell is now using an unusual legal mechanism known as a habeas petition, which seeks extraordinary relief from a court. In the lengthy filing, Maxwell, 63, argues that “newly discovered evidence” proves that she “did not receive a fair trial by independent jurors coming to Court with an open mind”. The filing says her conviction must be vacated because a juror at her trial in 2021 “gave false answers during voir dire” — the jury selection process — “concealing a history of sexual abuse directly relevant to “issues at trial.”
Timing and Context
Maxwell’s filing also comes just days before records in her legal case are scheduled to be released publicly as a result of US President Donald Trump’s signing of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The law, which Trump signed after months of public and political pressure on his administration, requires the Department of Justice to provide the public with Epstein-related records by December 19. Her submissions with the federal court in Manhattan were also filed pro se, meaning that they were filed by Maxwell herself, rather than by her attorneys.
Background and Current Status
Maxwell, 63, was convicted in 2021 — after a three-week trial in Manhattan federal court — of five felonies, including conspiracy, transportation of a minor to engage in illegal sexual activity and sex trafficking of a minor. A higher court rejected her post-trial appeals, and the Supreme Court declined to take up her case. She was held at a low-security prison in Tallahassee, Florida, but moved to a less restrictive minimum-security prison in Bryan, Texas, following a two-day interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche this summer.
Outlook and Significance
Proceedings of the type brought by Maxwell are routinely denied by judges and are often the last-ditch option available to offenders to have their convictions overturned, the AFP news agency reports. The timing of this petition, coinciding with the mandated release of Epstein-related files, adds another layer of complexity to one of the most high-profile criminal cases in recent years. For victims of Epstein’s abuse and the broader public, the release of these documents represents a long-awaited moment of transparency in a case that has captivated global attention and fuelled ongoing calls for accountability.