The US Department of Justice has recommended the Supreme Court deny a bid by former British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell to review her sex trafficking conviction.
Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison in June 2022, for her role in a scheme to sexually exploit and abuse multiple minor girls with Jeffrey Epstein.
The offences took place between 1994 and 2004.
Upon Maxwell being sentenced, a written ruling by Judge Alison Nathan said the jury’s guilty verdicts were “readily supported” by witness testimony and documentary evidence as Maxwell’s bid to overturn the conviction was dismissed.
In submissions before her sentencing hearing, the defendant’s counsel said she should face no more than four to five years in prison, saying it would be “a travesty of justice for her to face a sentence that would have been appropriate for Epstein”.
But the judge gave Maxwell a sentence much greater, saying she “repeatedly, and over the course of many years participated in a horrific scheme to traffic young girls, some the age of 14”.
Maxwell has now for the second time appealed for her case to be reviewed.
At the centre of her argument, Maxwell says a non-prosecution agreement which the US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida entered into with Epstein in 2007 had barred her prosecution by US Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
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GETTY | Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, who was jailed in 2022
"That contention is incorrect and petitioner [Maxwell] does not show that it would succeed in any court of appeals", wrote Solicitor General D. John Sauer in a letter from the US Department of Justice to the Supreme Court.
Sauer concluded the letter by saying the petition for a review "should be denied".
Maxwell was found guilty on December 29, 2021, of luring young girls to massage rooms for disgraced financier Epstein to molest over the course of a decade.
The guilty verdict followed a month-long jury trial.
GETTY | Donald Trump, Melania Trump, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell pictured in 2000
Her offences included conspiracy to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, conspiracy to transport minors to participate in illegal sex acts, transporting a minor to participate in illegal sex acts, sex trafficking conspiracy, and sex trafficking of a minor.
Epstein was found dead in his cell at a federal jail in Manhattan in August, 2019, while he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges.
The death was ruled as suicide.