Ghislaine Maxwell claims Bill Barr made her a 'scapegoat' in new appeal

Ghislaine Maxwell has asked an appeals court to toss out her conviction for helping sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein abuse teenage girls.

The Tuesday night filing argues that her "theatrical" arrest was intended to save then-U.S. attorney general William Barr from "embarrassment," and they said prosecutors made her a scapegoat after the 66-year-old Epstein killed himself in jail while awaiting trial, reported Reuters.

“It was a calculated publicity stunt designed specifically to criminalize her in the eyes of her future jury and the world,” her attorneys said in a statement.

The 61-year-old Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence after her December 2021 conviction on five charges for recruiting and grooming four girls for abuse by Epstein over a decade in the 1990s and early 2000s.

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The filing by attorney Arthur Aidala claimed that errors in the Epstein sex abuse story improperly tainted her trial, and he argued that Epstein's 2007 non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors immunized her by shielding "potential co-conspirators" from prosecution -- although that argument has already failed in court before.