(Washington) The United States Supreme Court rejected Ghislaine Maxwell’s request on Monday, ex-partner and accomplice of Jeffrey Epstein, to have his conviction for 20 years in prison for sexual exploitation.
In an unwinding decision, the Court rejects the appeal of Ghislaine Maxwell to obtain the cancellation of the proceedings which led to its conviction in 2022, which it will therefore have to purge in full, unless a possible presidential grace or a lightening of sentence.
The Department of Justice was dryly opposed to this appeal in July.
Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyer, aged 63, had criticized the Department of Justice for “being diversioned by a sordid and subject to the actions of Jeffrey Epstein”.
“This case concerns what the government has promised, not what Epstein did,” he said. He argued with an agreement concluded in 2007 between the Federal Prosecutor’s Office of Florida and Jeffrey Epstein under which only the latter would be prosecuted, believing that this agreement should have prevented the New York Federal Prosecutor’s Office from then instilling in his client.
The Department of Justice recently changed its tone with regard to Ghislaine Maxwell. The number two of the department, Todd Blanche, former personal lawyer of Donald Trump, went at the end of July until going to Tallahassee, the capital of Florida, where she purges her sentence, to question him for a day and a half.
Shortly after, she was transferred to a prison to a less strict security regime in Texas, causing the indignation of the victims and their relatives.
The death of Jeffrey Epstein, found hanged in his cell in New York on August 10, 2019 before his trial for sexual crimes, fueled countless conspiracy theories that he was murdered to suffocate a stripping scandal of leading personalities.
Donald Trump, who for months promised his basis of shattering revelations on this file, underwent a return of flame, including in his own camp, since his government announced in July that it has discovered any new element which would justify the publication of additional documents.
The director of the Federal Police (FBI), Kash Patel, justified this decision in September, affirming before a parliamentary commission that “no credible information” in the file made it possible to conclude that Jeffrey Epstein had delivered his victims to other people than himself.
Asked in July about the possibility of granting presidential grace or a switching of sentence to Ghislaine Maxwell, Donald Trump had assured “not having thought of it” and that the moment had not come to talk about it.
