Judge Paul Engelmayer of the Southern District of New York denied Ghislaine Maxwell's bid to vacate her five felony convictions on 25 August, ruling that the Epstein files released under the 2025 transparency act strengthen the case against her rather than undermine it.
Engelmayer's 67-page opinion described the petition as "lengthy and rambling" and its arguments as "all meritless and all or almost all are frivolous."
On the disclosed material itself he wrote that "to the extent it is relevant, far from exculpating her, it incriminates her or reinforces the correctness of the legal rulings Maxwell challenges".
Maxwell drafted the petition herself, without a lawyer, and filed it in December 2025, before the Justice Department published anything. Engelmayer sealed her exhibits on 22 December after finding she had named victims who were never publicly identified at trial, reminded her "in strong terms" that she was prohibited from doing so, ordered every future filing from her to be submitted under seal and set two dates: 17 February 2026 to tell the court whether she intended to use the coming disclosure and 31 March 2026 to file an amended petition built on it.
Ten principal claims survived into the amended petition Maxwell filed in March, arguing that documents released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act exposed constitutional violations rendering her 2021 conviction "invalid, unsafe, and infirm". Maxwell alleged the government had withheld evidence that would have helped her, that witnesses testified falsely and that lawyers for Epstein's accusers had functioned as "de facto prosecutors". She also revived the 2007 non-prosecution agreement Epstein signed in Florida and argued she had been selectively prosecuted as a stand-in for a dead man.
Engelmayer disposed of most of the 10 claims without reaching their merits. "The vast majority are procedurally barred, either because Maxwell made and lost the same arguments on direct appeal, or because she could have made such arguments on appeal but elected not to do so," he wrote. Asked to identify an intervening change in law that might reopen them, he answered himself: "There is none."
Juror 50, whose failure to disclose his own childhood sexual abuse on a jury questionnaire produced a hearing and an appeal after the 2021 trial, returned in the petition and left the same way.
The claim is "squarely barred by the mandate rule", Engelmayer wrote, and the newly released exhibits Maxwell attached to it "are non-events" that do nothing to disturb the finding that Juror 50 "served fairly and impartially".
The 2007 agreement bound the US attorney's office for the Southern District of Florida and nobody else, Engelmayer held, applying the circuit rule that a plea agreement "binds only the office of the United States Attorney for the district in which the plea is entered unless it affirmatively appears that the agreement contemplates a broader restriction". Nothing in the document showed an intention to reach beyond Florida, he wrote, and its scope was "expressly limited" to that district.
Maxwell argued that prosecutors had charged her as a substitute for a dead man. Her prosecution rested on "abundant admissible evidence", Engelmayer wrote, and was "the epitome of a virtuous prosecution".
Grand jury testimony from a detective who searched Epstein's Palm Beach house in 2005 formed one of Maxwell's newly minted claims: that his 2006 account of which bathroom held a massage table contradicted what he told her jury. Engelmayer found that the 2006 testimony never specified a bathroom at all, that an inconsistency surfacing after 16 years would be a mistake rather than perjury and that other evidence corroborated the detective regardless.
Todd Blanche, then the deputy attorney general and now attorney general, interviewed Maxwell over two days at the federal prison in Tallahassee on 24 and 25 July 2025, and the transcript came back to the court in her own case. Maxwell described managing Epstein's properties, staff and budgets and being "still around" long after the point at which her petition places her exit. Epstein kept paying her roughly $250,000 a year until 2009. Her petition told Engelmayer she had largely left his household by 2002.
The Bureau of Prisons moved Maxwell from that low-security facility to the minimum-security camp at Bryan, Texas, on 1 August 2025, one week after the interviews ended. A former bureau official told Fox News the transfer was "highly unusual".
Engelmayer closed the order by finding that Maxwell "has not made a substantial showing of a denial of a constitutional right" and certifying that "any appeal from this order would not be taken in good faith". Without a certificate of appealability the Second Circuit will not hear the case at all, and the good-faith certification denies her the right to appeal without paying the costs while telling the appellate judges what the trial judge made of her claims.
Clemency and what is left
Trump has been asked about a Maxwell pardon three times since July 2025 and has ruled one out on none of those occasions. In July 2025 he said he was "allowed" to grant clemency, that "nobody's approached me with it" and that "it would be inappropriate to talk about it". In October 2025 he said he would "have to take a look at" the case and that "I wouldn't consider it or not consider it, I don't know anything about it". Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in February 2026 that a pardon "is not something he's considering or thinking about".
David Oscar Markus, Maxwell's attorney, told Politico in April 2026 that there was "a good chance and for good reason that she would get a pardon" and that he was holding the formal request back until public attention moved on. "I don't think now is the best time to do it," he said.
Maxwell appeared for a House Oversight Committee deposition on 9 February 2026 and invoked her Fifth Amendment right to silence in answer to every question, citing the habeas petition then pending before Engelmayer. Markus posted a statement on X the same day saying she was prepared to "speak fully and honestly" if Trump granted clemency, that "both President Trump and President Clinton are innocent of any wrongdoing" and that "Ms. Maxwell alone can explain why, and the public is entitled to that explanation". Trump denies wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.
Representative Melanie Stansbury, a New Mexico Democrat on the committee, said of the deposition: "It's very clear she's campaigning for clemency." Representative Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican, wrote on social media: "NO CLEMENCY. You comply or face punishment."
The Senate passed a resolution opposing any pardon or commutation for Maxwell by unanimous consent on 29 July 2026, sponsored by Jacky Rosen of Nevada and timed to the Judiciary Committee vote on Blanche's nomination as attorney general. "There should never be a pardon for someone who helped a monster abuse underage girls for years," Rosen said. Jamie Raskin filed a parallel resolution in the House on 26 November 2025. "Pardons are for people who acknowledge their criminal responsibility," Raskin said. "Ghislaine Maxwell is the exact opposite of the kind of prisoner who deserves a pardon." Neither resolution binds the president.
Maxwell is serving 20 years at Bryan after her conviction in December 2021 on five counts, including conspiracy and the trafficking of a minor for rape, and becomes eligible for release in 2037. The Supreme Court declined to hear her direct appeal on 6 October 2025, which closed the ordinary route of review and left the petition Engelmayer has now denied.
The disclosure that produced the petition
The Justice Department published more than 3 million pages on 30 January, bringing the total released under the act to nearly 3.5 million, alongside more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images drawn from the Florida and New York investigations, the Maxwell prosecution, the FBI files and the inspector general's inquiry into Epstein's death in custody in August 2019. Department lawyers withheld duplicates, privileged material, records depicting violence and unrelated case files. Jay Clayton, the US attorney in Manhattan, certified compliance with the act's victim-protection provisions, and the department said that "notable individuals and politicians were not redacted in the release of any files".
Judge Emmet Sullivan in the District of Columbia has ruled that the department broke the act, finding in a compliance suit brought by the attorney and journalist Katie Phang that Blanche's office conceded the violation, ordering redactions lifted and warning department lawyers on 13 August that he would hold them in contempt. A department spokesperson said Blanche "has not conceded anything" and called Sullivan's reading a "perverse interpretation". The department filed notice of appeal to the D.C. Circuit on 24 August, one day after the deadline expired on a sworn declaration Sullivan had ordered it to produce.
Judge Loretta Preska cleared a separate tranche for release on 11 August, rejecting Maxwell's objection that grand jury secrecy and privacy protected documents she had handed over in Virginia Giuffre's 2015 civil suit against her. "If documents remain secret, the public will be left with an incomplete and potentially misleading picture of Maxwell and Epstein's criminal activities," Preska wrote, holding that the transparency act overrides the earlier secrecy orders.
Testimony without charges
No other living person has been convicted in connection with Epstein's trafficking operation. Maxwell's conviction remains the only one, seven years after his death ended the prosecution that would have tested the rest of the network in open court.
Barbara McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor and former US attorney, said in April that charging anyone else requires "rock solid evidence" and that limitation periods have probably run on the tax offences investigators once weighed. Jessica Roth of Cardozo School of Law said conspiracy charges "would require knowledge and intent on the part of each individual who was charged". Justice Department spokesperson Katie Kenlein said "there has not been credible evidence that their activities extended to Epstein's network". None of the three has been contradicted by a charging decision in the seven months since publication.
Bill Gates told the House Oversight Committee on 10 June that meeting Epstein was "a grave error in judgment", that he "accepted the introduction without applying the scrutiny I should have" and that he "never witnessed nor had any indication that Epstein was engaged in ongoing criminal conduct". Gates said Epstein later tried to use information about his affairs, "in addition to many lies", to pressure him back into contact and that he cut off the relationship in December 2014.
Leon Black walked out of his transcribed interview with the same committee on 26 June after refusing to say how many non-disclosure agreements he had signed or who held them. "I'm not here to talk about confidential NDAs," Black said. He acknowledged paying Epstein more than $170 million for financial advice between 2012 and 2017 and paying a woman more than $21 million after a six-year affair, an agreement Epstein knew about because he handled Black's finances. "I have never paid Epstein for access to women," Black said. Aaron Cutler, his attorney, said the session was "nothing more than a planned political stunt". The committee issued two subpoenas the same day, one compelling Black to return under oath and one demanding the agreements themselves. His deposition is set for 3 September.
Hillary Clinton denied ever meeting Epstein in a closed-door deposition on 26 February, and Bill Clinton told the committee the following day, "I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong." Lesley Groff, Epstein's longtime executive assistant and one of four women granted immunity by the 2007 Florida agreement, sat for a transcribed interview on 9 June.
Audra Christiansen, who says Maxwell threatened her and her family after she was abused in 2004, called the petition "deeply troubling" and said "the focus cannot continually shift away from the people who were harmed and toward portraying those convicted in this network as its victims". Arick Fudali, who represents 11 Epstein survivors, said Maxwell "belongs behind bars for the remainder of her sentence".
Survivors seeking money in the United States have had to sue banks rather than people. Judge Jed Rakoff approved Bank of America's $72.5 million class settlement with about 60 Epstein accusers on 27 August, resting on financial records obtained in civil discovery rather than through the department's disclosure, among them suspicious activity reports the bank filed on more than $170 million moving between Black and Epstein. JPMorgan Chase paid $290 million and Deutsche Bank $75 million in 2023, a parallel claim against Bank of New York Mellon was dismissed and none of the three banks that settled admitted wrongdoing.
