The Justice Department is preparing to reply to British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell’s filing claiming she should have never been charged in Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex trafficking case.
Currently serving a 20-year prison sentence, Maxwell’s lawyers argue she shouldn’t have been put on trial in the first place because of the plea deal Epstein reached with Florida prosecutors in 2008.
Attorney General Pam Bondi’s DOJ is due to respond to the filing on Monday, July 14.
Bondi can’t seem to escape the Epstein case despite her desperate attempts to leave it in the rearview mirror.
The Maxwell filing comes at a particularly charged time for Bondi where, as head of DOJ, she is under fire by pro-MAGA firebrands claiming she botched the Epstein files review.
Last weekend the DOJ and FBI leaked an unsigned memo concluding that Epstein did kill himself in prison in August 2019 and that he did not hold a converted ‘client list’ of high-profile co-conspirators.
The memo said that no more people would be arrested, charged or convicted in the Epstein child sex trafficking case.
An uproar ensued among Trump’s base with calls for him to fire Bondi, and Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino threatening to resign if the AG stuck around.
Republicans and Democrats aren’t buying the story that there isn’t more to be learned from the evidence in the case.
Meanwhile, the DOJ is facing a staffing issue at the office charged with defending legal challenges against Trump administration policies.
Of the roughly 110 lawyers in the Federal Programs Branch, 69 have voluntarily left or announced plans to leave since President Donald Trump’s election in November, according to Reuters.
Trump has defended Bondi’s leadership at the Justice Department despite a growing chorus of pro-MAGA voices expressing ire at her handling of the Epstein files.
Maxwell is still the only person facing the music for Epstein’s crimes.
While the disgraced financier was in prison, he died on August 10, 2019 in what was determined to be a suicide by hanging.
French modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, an associate of Epstein’s, was arrested on December 16, 2020 by French authorities, but also died by suicide in 2022 before his trial could proceed.
Therefore Maxwell is the only one left serving a sentence for the child sex trafficking crimes on charges of perjury, enticement and conspiracy to entice minors and the transportation of minors with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity.
In June 2022 she was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
But Maxwell’s lawyers say she should have never been put up on trial.
‘Despite the existence of a non-prosecution agreement promising in plain language that the United States would not prosecute any co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein, the United States in fact prosecuted Ghislaine Maxwell as a co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein,’ they wrote in a filing reviewed by Newsweek.
‘Only because the United States did so in the Second Circuit and not elsewhere, her motion to dismiss the indictment was denied, her trial proceeded, and she is now serving a 20-year sentence,’ they lamented.
Due to the disparity between how circuit courts interpret the plea deals made by the U.S. with plaintiffs, Epstein’s lawyers were requesting a review by the DOJ on initial charges against Maxwell.
In at least five other circuit court jurisdictions, Maxwell’s dismissal request would have likely been granted – this includes the Eleventh Circuit where Epstein’s agreement was entered.
‘This inconsistency in the law by which the same promise by the United States means different things in different places should be addressed by this Court,’ Maxwell’s lawyers argued.