Judge rejects Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking conviction appeal

Judge found that former British high-society figure failed to make substantial case that constitutional rights were denied when she was convicted for crimes related to late billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Published Aug 25, 2026  •  2 minute read

This July 2020 file photo shows Acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Audrey Strauss, pointing to a photo of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Photo by Getty Images

Ghislaine Maxwell is staying in jail.

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A U.S. federal judge has rejected Maxwell’s legal bid to throw out her 2021 conviction on sex trafficking charges and her 20-year prison sentence.

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In a decision filed on Tuesday, District Judge Paul Engelmayer called the former British high-society figure’s claims “demonstrably meritless, and generally based on speculation, distortions, and/or outright falsehoods.” The judge found Maxwell failed to make a substantial case that her constitutional rights had been denied when she was convicted for crimes related to late billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

She is currently serving her sentence at a minimum security prison camp in Bryon, Texas.

Maxwell defeated

Maxwell petitioned the court to throw out her conviction on grounds that one of the jurors at her trial later revealed he was a victim of sexual abuse, and her allegation that some evidence wasn’t made available to her defence team. She also raised a 2007 non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors in Miami which she claimed protected her from prosecution, but Maxwell was not named in that agreement.

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In his decision, Engelmayer wrote the reasons behind her appeal “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.”

The judge added that new information that had come to light in a massive disclosure of Epstein-related documents by the U.S. government only served to justify the conviction that Maxwell challenged.

Maxwell failed in a previous attempt to overturn her conviction, using the government’s non-prosecution deal with Epstein. U.S. Supreme Court justices declined to hear the appeal. She was interviewed by former attorney general Todd Blanche in July of 2025 after mounting pressure on the Trump White House over the Epstein investigation.

Epstein files

Epstein was a billionaire financier who, with the help of Maxwell, ran an international sex-trafficking ring involving underage girls. He socialized among some of the world’s richest and most powerful people before committing suicide (according to authorities) while in U.S. federal custody awaiting trial in 2019.

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After Epstein’s death, federal judges ordered the disclosure of thousands of court documents now publicly known as “the Epstein files,” which exposed his connections to wealthy and powerful figures. Among those mentioned in the files are Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (formerly Prince Andrew), Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, U.S. President Donald Trump, former U.S. president Bill Clinton, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, former U.S. vice president Al Gore, former New Mexico governor, the late Bill Richardson, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, tech billionaire Elon Musk, magician David Copperfield and the late pop star Michael Jackson.

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