Ghislaine Maxwell, who conspired with Jeffrey Epstein in a sex-trafficking scheme, asked a Manhattan federal judge on Wednesday to set aside her December 2021 conviction, claiming that a series of constitutional violations had denied her a fair trial.
Ms. Maxwell, 63, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence, said “substantial new evidence” supporting her claim had emerged from related civil lawsuits, government disclosures, investigative reports and other sources.
“The cumulative effect of these constitutional violations constitutes a complete miscarriage of justice,” Ms. Maxwell wrote.
The filing comes two days before the Justice Department is to release a trove of confidential grand jury records and other materials from the government’s long-running investigations of Ms. Maxwell and Mr. Epstein under a law President Trump signed last month, the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The law requires the materials’ disclosure by Dec. 19.
Ms. Maxwell’s court filing on Wednesday, known as a habeas petition, runs 52 pages and is signed only by her, without any indication that a lawyer helped her prepare it. Earlier this month, David Oscar Markus, who was then representing Ms. Maxwell, said in a letter to the judge, Paul A. Engelmayer, that she planned to file a petition without the assistance of a lawyer.
Mr. Markus told the judge that the release of the grand jury records in Ms. Maxwell’s case, “which contain untested and unproven allegations, would create undue prejudice so severe that it would foreclose the possibility of a fair retrial should Ms. Maxwell’s habeas petition succeed.”
Among Ms. Maxwell’s claims in her petition were that three jurors in her trial concealed their own histories of sexual abuse from the court during the jury selection process. She also accused prosecutors of working too closely with private lawyers representing alleged victims who she said had financial interests in the outcome of her criminal case.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to comment on Ms. Maxwell’s petition.
Mr. Epstein, 66, was found dead in his jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide.
Ms. Maxwell was arrested in July 2020, and after a monthlong trial, she was convicted of sex-trafficking conspiracy, sex-trafficking a minor and other counts. Prosecutors had accused her of grooming a 14-year-old girl to engage in sexual acts with Mr. Epstein and later paying her.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan upheld Ms. Maxwell’s conviction last year, and this past October, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would not hear her appeal.
Ms. Maxwell returned to the spotlight this year after Todd Blanche, the Justice Department’s second-in-command and a former lawyer for Mr. Trump, traveled to Florida and interviewed her over two days. Mr. Blanche’s visit came amid criticism of Mr. Trump by those who had demanded the release of all federal files related to Mr. Epstein.
About a week after the interview with Mr. Blanche, Ms. Maxwell was moved from a federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security camp in Texas.
Benjamin Weiser is a Times reporter covering the federal courts and U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, and the justice system more broadly.
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