Jeffrey Epstein's former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, is transferred
to a prison camp in Texas
[August 02, 2025]
By ERIC TUCKER
WASHINGTON (AP) — Jeffrey Epstein's former girlfriend, Ghislaine
Maxwell, has been moved from a federal prison in Florida to a prison
camp in Texas as her criminal case generates renewed public attention.
The federal Bureau of Prisons said Friday that Maxwell had been
transferred to Bryan, Texas, but did not explain the circumstances. Her
attorney, David Oscar Markus, also confirmed the move but declined to
discuss the reasons for it.
Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of luring teenage girls to be sexually
abused by the disgraced financier, and was sentenced to 20 years in
prison. She had been held at a low-security prison in Tallahassee,
Florida, until her transfer to the prison camp in Texas, where other
inmates include Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and Jen Shah of “The
Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.”
Minimum-security federal prison camps house inmates the Bureau of
Prisons considers to be the lowest security risk. Some don’t even have
fences.
The prison camps were originally designed with low security to make
operations easier and to allow inmates tasked with performing work at
the prison, like landscaping and maintenance, to avoid repeatedly
checking in and out of a main prison facility.
Prosecutors have said Epstein's sex crimes could not have been done
without Maxwell, but her lawyers have maintained that she was wrongly
prosecuted and denied a fair trial, and have floated the idea of a
pardon from President Donald Trump. They have also asked the U.S.
Supreme Court to take up her case.
Trump said Friday night that no one has asked him about a clemency for
Maxwell.
“I’m allowed to do it but nobody’s asked me to do it," he told Newsmax
in an interview broadcast Friday night. "I know nothing about it. I
don’t know anything about the case, but I know I have the right to do
it. I have the right to give pardons, I’ve given pardons to people
before, but nobody’s even asked me to do it.”
Maxwell’s case has been the subject of heightened public focus since an
outcry over the Justice Department's statement last month saying that it
would not be releasing any additional documents from the Epstein sex
trafficking investigation. The decision infuriated online sleuths,
conspiracy theorists and elements of Trump's base who had hoped to see
proof of a government cover-up.
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Audrey Strauss, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of
New York, points to a photo of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine
Maxwell, during a news conference in New York on July 2, 2020. (AP
Photo/John Minchillo, File)
Since then, administration officials have tried to cast themselves
as promoting transparency in the case, including by requesting from
courts the unsealing of grand jury transcripts.
Maxwell, meanwhile, was interviewed at a Florida courthouse over two
days last week by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and the House
Oversight Committee had also said that it wanted to speak with
Maxwell. Her lawyers said this week that they would be open to an
interview but only if the panel were to ensure immunity from
prosecution.
In the Newsmax interview, Trump said he did not know when Blanche
would disclose to the public what he and Maxwell discussed during
the interviews.
“I think he just wants to make sure that innocent people aren’t
hurt, but you’d have to speak to him about it,” Trump said.
In a letter Friday to Maxwell’s lawyers, Rep. James Comer, the
committee chair, wrote that the committee was willing to delay the
deposition until after the resolution of Maxwell's appeal to the
Supreme Court. That appeal is expected to be resolved in late
September.
Comer wrote that while Maxwell’s testimony was “vital” to the
Republican-led investigation into Epstein, the committee would not
provide immunity or any questions in advance of her testimony, as
was requested by her team.
___
Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo, Matt Brown and Darlene
Superville contributed to this report.
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