CONVICTED CHILD SEX TRAFFICKER MAXWELL GETS SPECIAL TREATMENT AFTER TALKING TO TRUMP’S LAWYER
Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein now serving a 20-year prison sentence for sexually exploiting and abusing teenage girls, has been moved from a federal prison in Florida to minimum-security prison camp in Texas, her lawyer said on Friday.
The move, which was reported earlier by The New York Sun, came about a week after Ms. Maxwell was interviewed over two daysabout the Epstein case by Todd Blanche, the No. 2 official in the Justice Department and one of President Trump’s former lawyers.
Ms. Maxwell’s lawyer, David O. Markus, declined to comment on the reason for the move.
According to Bureau of Prison regulations, inmates designated as sex offenders are generally supposed to be held in low-security prisons, like the facility in Tallahassee, Fla., where Ms. Maxwell had been previously held, not in minimum-security facilities, like her new prison camp in Bryan, Texas.
Mr. Blanche met with Ms. Maxwell and Mr. Markus last Thursday and Friday amid a firestorm of criticism from Trump supporters who have called for the administration to release all federal files related to Mr. Epstein.
Before entering government service, several top aides to Mr. Trump, including the F.B.I. director Kash Patel, had led the president’s followers to believe that there were secrets lurking in the Epstein files about a cabal of powerful men implicated in Mr. Epstein’s sex crimes. Many of those followers were outraged after the Justice Department released an unsigned letter last month saying there would be no further disclosures about the case.
The letter was issued about two months after top officials at the Justice Department informed Mr. Trump that he himself was mentioned in the files, according to several people with knowledge of the exchange. A person’s name appearing in the documents is not necessarily an indication of wrongdoing.
Mr. Markus has said that during Ms. Maxwell’s interview with Mr. Blanche, she answered questions about 100 people. It remains unclear whether those people were victims of Mr. Epstein, his associates or other people implicated in her own sex-trafficking case.
Ms. Maxwell has made it clear that she would like a pardon or for her sentence to be thrown out or reduced. Mr. Trump has not indicated what he intends to do but has told reporters that he is legally allowed to pardon Ms. Maxwell.
Two women who have accused Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell of abusing them, Maria and Annie Farmer, and the family members of another, Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide this spring, reacted angrily to the news of Ms. Maxwell’s relocation.
“It is with horror and outrage that we object to the preferential treatment convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has received,” they said in a statement on Friday. “Ghislaine Maxwell is a sexual predator who physically assaulted minor children on multiple occasions, and she should never be shown any leniency.”
“President Trump has sent a clear message today: Pedophiles deserve preferential treatment and their victims do not matter,” the statement said. (Source: New York Times.)