Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyer has asked a federal appeals court to throw out her sex trafficking conviction and 20-year prison sentence, arguing that Jeffrey Epstein’s 2007 non-prosecution deal with a U.S. attorney in Florida should have prevented her prosecution.
Maxwell’s attorney, Diana Fabi Samson, argued that the deal Epstein struck in Florida to prevent a federal case against him should also have protected Maxwell in New York.
The argument was challenged by one judge on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, who repeatedly questioned the validity of Samson’s argument. Lawyers for Maxwell are challenging her conviction on multiple grounds, but the only topic at oral arguments was the non-prosecution deal.
Ghislaine Maxwell (Credits: Entertainment Weekly)
Maxwell, 62, is serving her sentence at a low-security federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida. Epstein’s lawyers made a similar argument about the force of his non-prosecution deal in Florida after his 2019 sex trafficking arrest in Manhattan, but the legal question became moot after his death in federal custody.
Maxwell was convicted in December 2021 on charges related to her role in recruiting and grooming teenage girls for Epstein to abuse. Samson argued that a provision of Epstein’s non-prosecution agreement protecting potential co-conspirators should have prevented prosecutors from charging her 13 years later.
Ghislaine Maxwell (Credits: New York Post)
However, Circuit Judge Raymond Lohier challenged Samson’s argument, noting that the Florida agreement identified several individuals besides Epstein who should have been protected under the deal, but Maxwell was not among them. Lohier said that each U.S. attorney’s office’s decisions could not require other offices to conform.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Rohrbach, arguing for the government, said that he didn’t know of any deal made by one federal prosecutor’s office that required every other U.S. attorney to agree to abide by.
Attorney Sigrid McCawley, who represents trial witness Annie Farmer, said the arguments did nothing to change “the fact that she does not get a free pass and her conviction should be upheld.”
Farmer, now a psychologist, testified at the trial and spoke at Maxwell’s sentencing about the abuse she experienced from Epstein and Maxwell.
