Imprisoned Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell seeks release,
citing 'new evidence'
[December 18, 2025]
By MICHAEL R. SISAK and LARRY NEUMEISTER
NEW YORK (AP) — Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend and longtime
associate Ghislaine Maxwell asked a federal judge on Wednesday to set
aside her sex trafficking conviction and free her from a 20-year prison
sentence, saying “substantial new evidence” has emerged proving that
constitutional violations spoiled her trial.
Maxwell maintained in a habeas petition she has promised to file since
August that information that would have resulted in her exoneration at
her 2021 trial was withheld and false testimony was presented to the
jury.
She said the cumulative effect of the constitutional violations resulted
in a “complete miscarriage of justice.”
A habeas petition (or writ of habeas corpus petition) is a legal request
for a court to review the legality of someone’s detention, demanding
that the custodian (like a prison official) bring the prisoner before a
judge to justify the imprisonment, serving as a fundamental safeguard
against unlawful confinement and arbitrary detention by ensuring due
process. Filed by or on behalf of someone in custody, it challenges
constitutional violations, such as ineffective legal counsel or unfair
trials, and seeks release or other relief, often as a last resort after
appeals are exhausted.
“Since the conclusion of her trial, substantial new evidence has emerged
from related civil actions, Government disclosures, investigative
reports, and documents demonstrating constitutional violations that
undermined the fairness of her proceeding,” the filing in Manhattan
federal court said. “In the light of the full evidentiary record, no
reasonable juror would have convicted her.”
The filing came just two days before records in her case were scheduled
to be released publicly as a result of President Donald Trump's signing
of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The law, signed after months of
public and political pressure, requires the Justice Department to
provide the public with Epstein-related records by Dec. 19.
Forced to act by the new transparency law, the Justice Department has
said it plans to release 18 categories of investigative materials
gathered in the massive sex trafficking probe, including search
warrants, financial records, notes from interviews with victims, and
data from electronic devices.
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This undated photo released by Democrats on the House Oversight
Committee shows former President Bill Clinton, Ghislaine Maxwell and
Jeffrey Epstein, with Clinton's signature at the top of the photo.
(House Oversight Committee via AP)
Epstein, a millionaire financier, was arrested in July 2019 on sex
trafficking charges. A month later, he was found dead in his cell at
a New York federal jail and the death was ruled a suicide. Maxwell,
a British socialite, was arrested a year later and was convicted of
sex trafficking in December 2021. She was interviewed by the Justice
Department’s second-in-command in July and was soon afterward moved
from a federal prison in Florida to a prison camp in Texas.
After the Justice Department asked a New York federal judge to
permit grand jury and discovery materials gathered prior to her
trial to be released publicly, attorney David Markus wrote on her
behalf that while Maxwell now “does not take a position” on
unsealing documents from her case, doing so “would create undue
prejudice so severe that it would foreclose the possibility of a
fair retrial” if her habeas petition succeeds.
The records, Markus said, “contain untested and unproven
allegations.”
Last week, Judge Paul A. Engelmayer in Manhattan granted the Justice
Department's request to publicly release the materials.
On Wednesday, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said during a news
conference on another topic that he would follow the law and the
judge's orders pertaining to the records.
Engelmayer, who along with other judges had previously rejected
Justice Department unsealing requests before the transparency law
was passed, said the materials “do not identify any person other
than Epstein and Maxwell as having had sexual contact with a minor.”
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