Trump becomes Ghislaine Maxwell’s last hope as judge ends ‘frivolous’ release bid

A federal judge rejected Ghislaine Maxwell's bid to overturn her sex trafficking convictions, dismissing her claims as "meritless" and mostly "frivolous."

U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer denied the petition in a 67-page opinion dated Tuesday, leaving her 20-year sentence intact.

Maxwell built the petition around Epstein records the Justice Department released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the ruling said.

"Maxwell's claims are all meritless and all or almost all are frivolous," Engelmayer wrote, noting that she had already lost the same arguments on appeal or had chosen not to raise them at all.

"In a lengthy and rambling petition which Maxwell twice supplemented with similarly discursive addenda, she claims that her constitutional rights at trial and sentencing were violated in multiple respects," the judge wrote.

The released files did not help her, according to the ruling, which found that where the material was relevant, "far from exculpating her, it incriminates her." Engelmayer wrote that Maxwell "distorts those materials," including by attaching a single page of a Justice Department interview while omitting the next page, which undercut her reading of it.

The judge also cited an interview Maxwell gave in prison on July 24, 2025, to Todd Blanche, who was President Donald Trump's personal defense lawyer before joining the Justice Department, and to whom the Senate confirmed as attorney general on Aug. 8 by a vote of 50-49.

"I ran all the properties, the staff in the properties, the management of the properties[,] and all the construction," Maxwell told Blanche, according to the transcript quoted in the ruling.

Those answers undercut her own claim that she had largely left Jeffrey Epstein's household by 2002, Engelmayer wrote.

A week after that interview, Maxwell was moved to a minimum-security prison camp, a transfer Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said was made without explanation.

Maxwell has since sought clemency from Trump, and told House investigators in February that she would testify he did nothing wrong if he ended her sentence.

The judge called her claim that she was singled out for prosecution "patently frivolous," writing that she never identified anyone comparable to herself.

Maxwell "served for years as Epstein's indispensable recruiter and groomer in chief," Engelmayer wrote.

"Far from being discriminatory or unjust, this was the epitome of a virtuous prosecution," the judge wrote. "The Government and the jury justly held Maxwell accountable for gravely serious federal offenses."

Engelmayer also blocked her from appealing without paying court fees, certifying that any appeal "would not be taken in good faith."