The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal of the criminal conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein.
The court’s action ends Ms. Maxwell’s attempt to overturn her conviction, meaning her only chance of an early release from prison is likely to be clemency from President Trump, with whom she used to socialize in the Florida and New York party scenes.
Ms. Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence after being convicted in 2021 on federal charges related to facilitating the crimes of Mr. Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
Federal prosecutors have opposed her release. The justices considered her appeal at their so-called long conference, a meeting before the start of the new court term where they discuss which new cases they might add to their docket.
Although the crimes involved took place years ago, and Mr. Epstein died in jail, the case has continued to fascinate the public and plague Mr. Trump. Their nearly 15-year friendship has come under renewed scrutiny in the past few months, after the Trump administration declined to release the complete F.B.I. files from the sex-trafficking investigation into Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell, his former girlfriend.
Ms. Maxwell filed a petition to the Supreme Court in April, asking the justices to overturn her conviction. She argued that her criminal prosecution was barred by a now infamous deal between Mr. Epstein and prosecutors in Florida.
In the brief, Ms. Maxwell explained that after negotiations with federal prosecutors, Mr. Epstein pleaded guilty to state criminal charges in Florida in June 2008. As part of the agreement, federal prosecutors agreed not to bring more criminal charges against him related to the sex-trafficking investigation.
Critically, they also agreed not to charge his co-conspirators.
Ms. Maxwell argued that the charges filed against her in 2020 violated that agreement. The government has argued that the agreement was not violated since it was brokered by prosecutors in Florida, and Ms. Maxwell was charged in New York.
In her court filings, Ms. Maxwell argued that a person accused of a crime “should be able to rely on a promise that the United States will not prosecute again, without being subject to a gotcha” in another part of the country where prosecutors choose “to interpret that plain-language promise in some other way.”
She argued that the agreement by prosecutors not to prosecute Mr. Epstein’s co-conspirators contained “no geographic limitation.” In her brief to the court, she said the “default rule” should be “a promise made on behalf of the United States binds the entire United States unless it says so affirmatively.”
In July 2019, Mr. Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges brought by prosecutors in New York, who argued that they were not bound by a nonprosecution agreement in Miami.
About a month later, Mr. Epstein was found dead in a New York jail cell from an apparent suicide.
The following summer, prosecutors charged Ms. Maxwell, accusing her of helping to recruit the girls whom Mr. Epstein abused and of participating in the abuse herself. A federal trial judge found that Ms. Maxwell had benefited from Mr. Epstein’s deal with prosecutors but that she was not immune from prosecution.
A jury in New York convicted her, and in June 2022, a federal judge sentenced her to 20 years in prison, saying that she played a central role in the sexual abuse scheme.
Lawyers for the Trump administration urged the justices not to hear Ms. Maxwell’s appeal, claiming that the nonprosecution agreement did not extend to all federal prosecutors throughout the country.
In a response to Ms. Maxwell’s petition, Solicitor General D. John Sauer called her claims that the agreement shielded her from prosecution “incorrect” and argued that she had failed to “show that it would succeed in any court of appeals.”
Just days after Mr. Sauer asked the justices to reject her appeal, top Justice Department officials reached out to Ms. Maxwell’s lawyers to ask if they could interview her. The request was part of the administration’s frantic efforts to limit the damage from an announcement by Attorney General Pam Bondi that she would not release additional internal documents related to the Justice Department investigation.
Ms. Maxwell agreed to the interview. About a week after she spoke with a Justice Department official, she was moved to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas from a federal prison in Florida.
Abbie VanSickle covers the United States Supreme Court for The Times. She is a lawyer and has an extensive background in investigative reporting.
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