NEW YORK — Ghislaine Maxwell appealed her sex trafficking conviction on Tuesday, claiming the feds unfairly used her as a proxy for Jeffrey Epstein after he killed himself in their custody.
The former British socialite asked the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn her conviction based on what her lawyers described as the feds framing her. They argue that the government was motivated by a “zeal to pin the blame for its own incompetence” after Epstein’s suicide. Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison in June.
“The government prosecuted Ms. Maxwell ... as a proxy for Jeffrey Epstein,” Maxwell’s appeal lawyer Diana Fabi Samson wrote in the papers filed late Tuesday. “It did so to satisfy public outrage over an unpopular non-prosecution agreement and the death of the person responsible for the crimes.”
