JUST IN: Judge Rejects Ghislaine Maxwell’s Bid for Freedom as ‘Demonstrably Meritless’

Screenshot via House Oversight

A New York federal judge ripped convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell’s latest push for freedom as “demonstrably meritless.”

Maxwell filed in December in a bid to overturn her 20-year sentence, calling it a “complete miscarriage of justice.”

Judge Paul A. Engelmayer roundly rejected the 64-year-old’s claim of “substantial new evidence” in the case.

Maxwell’s claims were based on “speculation, distortions, and/or outright falsehoods,” the judge wrote, according to the Associated Press.

“Maxwell’s petition falls very far from the mark,” Engelmayer wrote. “There is no fact that Maxwell fairly puts in dispute that has any potential to disturb the outcome of her trial.”

The rejection comes weeks after the Senate unanimously opposed a potential pardon for Jeffrey Epstein’s madame, amid controversy over the confirmation of Todd Blanche as U.S. Attorney.

Engelmayer, who was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama in 2011, shredded Maxwell’s claims in a 67-page decision filed Monday in the U.S. Southern District of New York which read in part:

In a lengthy and rambling petition which Maxwell twice supplemented with similarly discursive addenda, she claims that her constitutional rights at trial and sentencing were violated in multiple respects. And, she claims, documents the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) publicly released earlier this year, pursuant to the Epstein Files Transparency Act (the “EFTA”), Pub. L. No. 119-38, 139 Stat. 656 (2025), support her claims of error.

Maxwell’s claims are all meritless and all or almost all are frivolous. 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. And the purported “new” evidence to which Maxwell points, principally materials released under the EFTA, is largely irrelevant to the charges against Maxwell and does not support her claims of error. On the contrary, to the extent it is relevant, far from exculpating her, it incriminates her or reinforces the correctness of the legal rulings Maxwell challenges.

Maxwell’s fate made headlines once again when Epstein survivors slammed Blanche for meeting with the sex trafficker for hours while barely giving victims the time of day as his nomination appeared to stall in the Senate.

Blanche eventually met with the victims, one of whom contended, “We were gaslit.”

This is a breaking story and has been updated.

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