By Andrew Chung
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear Ghislaine Maxwell’s bid to overturn her conviction for helping the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse teenage girls, steering clear of a case that continues to hound President Donald Trump and his administration.
The justices turned away an appeal by Maxwell, a British socialite and Epstein’s former girlfriend who is serving a 20-year prison sentence after being found guilty in 2021 by a jury in New York on charges including sex trafficking of a minor. By doing so, the justices let stand a lower court’s decision upholding Maxwell’s conviction.
Maxwell’s lawyers contend that her conviction was invalid because a non-prosecution and plea agreement that federal prosecutors made with Epstein in Florida in 2007 also shielded his associates and should have barred her criminal prosecution in New York.
She was arrested in 2020 and convicted the following year after being accused by federal prosecutors of recruiting and grooming girls for sexual encounters with Epstein between 1994 and 2004.
The Republican president and his administration have been trying to tamp down a political furor that erupted after the Justice Department’s decision not to release files from its investigation of Epstein – despite earlier pledges to do so – infuriated some of Trump’s most loyal followers.
Epstein died by suicide in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
The Epstein case has long been the subject of conspiracy theories, considering his rich and powerful friends and the circumstances of his death. Trump was friendly with Epstein in the 1990s and early 2000s, and their interactions have faced renewed scrutiny this year.
Maxwell’s appeal focuses on the deal Epstein struck in 2007 to avoid federal prosecution in part by pleading guilty to state criminal offenses in Florida of soliciting prostitution and soliciting minors to engage in prostitution. Epstein then served 13 months in a minimum-security state facility.
That agreement stated that “the United States also agrees that it will not institute any criminal charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein.” Maxwell’s lawyers said that in its reference to co-conspirators, the agreement placed no geographic limit on where the non-prosecution commitment could be enforced.
Maxwell failed to convince a trial judge and the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to throw out her conviction based on the 2007 non-prosecution agreement.
In 2019, during Trump’s first term as president, the Justice Department brought federal criminal charges against Epstein in Manhattan accusing him of sex trafficking of minors. Epstein pleaded not guilty, but died at age 66 before going on trial.
In July, Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, a former personal lawyer to Trump, met with Maxwell as Trump sought to quell criticism from his conservative base of supporters and congressional Democrats.
Maxwell told Blanche that she was not aware of any “client list” belonging to Epstein and never saw Trump behave inappropriately, according to a transcript of the interview. A week after the interview, Maxwell was moved from a low-security prison facility in Florida to a less-restrictive prison camp in Texas.
The Justice Department concluded in July that after reviewing more than 300 gigabytes of data, there was “no incriminating client list” nor was there any evidence that Epstein may have blackmailed prominent people.
FBI Director Kash Patel said in congressional testimony on September 16 that there was no credible information that Epstein trafficked women and underage girls to anyone but himself.
In a Reuters/Ipsos poll of more than 1,000 U.S. adults released in July, 69% of respondents said they thought the federal government was hiding details about Epstein’s clients, compared to 6% who disagreed and 25% who said they were not sure.
Democrats on a House of Representatives panel on September 8 made public a 2003 birthday letter Trump allegedly wrote to Epstein, though the White House denied its authenticity. The birthday letter contains text of a purported dialogue between Trump and Epstein in which Trump called him a “pal” and said, “May every day be another wonderful secret.” The text sits within a crude sketch of the silhouette of a naked woman.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)
