The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal from Ghislaine Maxwell, the former British socialite convicted of sex trafficking in connection with Jeffrey Epstein's abuse of underage girls, effectively ending her bid to overturn a 20-year federal prison sentence.
The court issued no explanation for its decision and did not indicate how many justices, if any, supported Maxwell's petition. The ruling leaves intact a lower-court decision that rejected her argument that she was shielded from prosecution under Epstein's 2008 non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida.
Maxwell's attorneys argued that the agreement - which promised that federal prosecutors would not pursue charges against "any potential co-conspirators of Epstein" - should have barred her 2021 indictment in New York. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled last year that the deal did not extend beyond the Florida jurisdiction that negotiated it.
Maxwell, 63, was convicted in 2021 of helping Epstein groom and abuse underage girls over a decade-long period. She is serving her sentence at a minimum-security federal prison in Texas, where she was transferred after a high-level Justice Department review earlier this year.
"We're, of course, deeply disappointed that the Supreme Court declined to hear Ghislaine Maxwell's case," her attorney David Oscar Markus said in a statement. "But this fight isn't over. Serious legal and factual issues remain, and we will continue to pursue every avenue available to ensure that justice is done."
In its brief to the high court, the Justice Department maintained that Maxwell "was not a party to the relevant agreement. Only Epstein and the Florida USAO were parties." The department's position was filed under the Trump administration, which has faced renewed scrutiny for its handling of Epstein-related records and for refusing to release investigative files that had been promised to the public.
Epstein, a financier with close ties to influential figures including Donald Trump, pleaded guilty to state prostitution charges in 2008 and later faced federal sex-trafficking charges in 2019 before dying by suicide in a Manhattan jail. Maxwell was arrested one year later and became the central figure in the government's effort to hold Epstein's associates accountable.
According to Justice Department filings, Maxwell met with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, formerly one of Trump's defense attorneys, before her transfer to the lower-security Texas facility. That move required a Bureau of Prisons waiver because of her status as a convicted sex offender.
Some of Trump's allies have seized on the case as a political flashpoint. The House Oversight Committee last month released thousands of pages of records from the Epstein investigation, including personal letters and a note bearing Trump's name found among Epstein's possessions. The president has repeatedly denied any inappropriate behavior and said he was unaware of Epstein's criminal conduct.
