Washington — The Supreme Court on Monday said it will not take up a bid by Ghislaine Maxwell to overturn her 2021 conviction and 20-year prison sentence for her role in a scheme to sexually exploit and abuse minor girls with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Maxwell’s appeal to the high court attracted added attention this summer as the Trump administration came under pressure to release more material related to the Justice Department’s investigation into Epstein, who died in federal custody in 2019. Congress also opened its own examination of the federal probe and has obtained and released thousands of pages of records related to Epstein, though many were already in the public domain.
Senior Justice Department officials unsuccessfully petitioned a federal court in New York to unseal grand jury material in Epstein’s case, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche met with Maxwell in Tallahassee, Florida, in July to discuss her relationship with Epstein and the allegations against her.
The Supreme Court’s rejection of Maxwell’s case means her conviction and sentence will remain intact, barring a presidential pardon.
At the heart of Maxwell’s appeal is a 2007 nonprosecution agreement between the U.S. attorney in Miami and Epstein, which she argued barred her prosecution for sex-trafficking violations.
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Epstein’s lawyers and then-U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta entered into the deal after a federal investigation into allegations Epstein engaged in sexual abuse of underage girls. In exchange for avoiding federal charges, Epstein agreed to plead guilty to two state prostitution charges and serve an 18-month prison sentence.
The agreement specified that if Epstein fulfilled all of its terms, he would not be prosecuted “in this district,” the Southern District of Florida. It also contained a so-called co-conspirators clause, which stated that if Epstein satisfied the deal’s conditions, the U.S. would “not institute any criminal char[g]es against any potential co-conspirator of Epstein, including but not limited to” four of his assistants.
A Justice Department official in West Palm Beach later told the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility the provision was “highly unusual,” and a former prosecutor who handled the case said she didn’t consider that Epstein may have been trying to protect anyone other than his four assistants, according to court records.
Acosta went on to serve as labor secretary during Mr. Trump’s first term, but he resigned in 2019 amid scrutiny of his handling of the nonprosecution agreement with Epstein. He stepped down shortly after Epstein was indicted on federal sex trafficking charges in New York. Epstein died by suicide while awaiting trial.
Maxwell, a longtime associate of Epstein’s, was indicted in New York in 2020 and charged with several criminal offenses arising out of her scheme with Epstein. She attempted to dismiss the indictment, arguing that the co-conspirators clause in Epstein’s nonprosecution agreement prohibited her prosecution because she was charged as his co-conspirator.
A federal district court rejected Maxwell’s effort, finding that the deal bound only the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Florida. It also ruled that most of the charges would’ve fallen outside the scope of the agreement even if it covered the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York.
Maxwell’s trial proceeded, and she was found guilty in 2021. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Maxwell had been serving her sentence at a federal correctional facility in Tallahassee, but she was moved to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas after meeting with Blanche, the deputy attorney general, in July.
She appealed her conviction and sentence on several grounds, including that the nonprosecution deal barred her prosecution. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit rejected her claims, ruling that “nothing in the text of the NPA precluded” the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan from bringing charges against Maxwell.
Maxwell asked the Supreme Court to take up her case in April, arguing that the co-conspirator clause contained no “geographic limitation” on where it could be enforced. Her lawyers said in a filing that a decision from the Supreme Court should ensure that plea deals are enforced consistently throughout the country, “so that when the United States makes a promise in a plea agreement, it is held to that promise.”
But the Trump administration urged the Supreme Court not to reconsider Maxwell’s conviction and sentence. It noted that Justice Department policy at the time the deal was negotiated prohibited U.S. attorneys from entering into agreements that bound other districts unless they received written approval from those districts or the head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.
“There is no indication here that anyone involved in negotiating Epstein’s NPA obtained the necessary approval for binding other USAOs or thought it was necessary,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in a filing.
