Arguing that Ghislaine Maxwell should not be punished for the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein, Maxwell’s legal team requested a far more lenient prison sentence than the 20 years recommended by the probation department, arguing that she should be sentenced to no more than five years and three months.
The filing comes less than two weeks before Maxwell is set to be sentenced for sex trafficking and related charges. At her trial late last year, federal prosecutors demonstrated how Maxwell groomed and recruited four girls for Epstein’s abuse. Epstein died in federal custody in 2019. He was suspected of abusing hundreds of girls and women.
“But this Court cannot sentence Ms. Maxwell as if she were a proxy for Epstein simply because Epstein is no longer here,” Maxwell’s legal team wrote. “Ms. Maxwell cannot and should not bear all the punishment for which Epstein should have been held responsible.”
Federal sentencing guidelines would suggest that Maxwell should be sentenced to between 24 years and four months in prison and 30 years and five months for the crimes she was convicted of.
Her lawyers argue, however, that those guidelines are not correct based on the timing of the crimes presented during her trial and that the range should, instead, be between four years and three months and five years and three months. Her lawyers further argue that she has never been charged with a crime before and that she was held in “extraordinary punitive conditions of solitary confinement” while in federal custody since her arrest in July 2020. Maxwell was denied bail by then-U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan four separate times ahead of her trial.
Maxwell’s lawyers write that Maxwell’s life has been threatened numerous times since Epstein’s death, most recently by a fellow inmate who they said had claimed she was offered money to kill Maxwell and was planning to strangle Maxwell in her sleep.
Maxwell’s lawyers don’t argue the merits of the case, writing in the 37-page sentencing submission that based on the extensive pre- and post-trial motions, “the Court is fully familiar with the record in this case.”
Annie Farmer, one of the four women who testified at the trial, expressed relief and gratitude after the verdict was announced in late December.
“She has caused hurt to many more women than the few of us who had the chance to testify in the courtroom,” Farmer said in a statement. “I hope that this verdict brings solace to all who need it and demonstrates that no one is above the law.”
Maxwell was arrested one year after Epstein had been arrested on new sex charges following the Miami Herald’s ‘Perversion of Justice’ series, which examined Epstein’s remarkably lenient plea deal more than a decade earlier that had allowed him to plead guilty to two state solicitation charges, one involving a minor, and serve just 13 months in a Palm Beach county jail, despite evidence he had abused 34 girls.
Maxwell’s lawyers argue that she suffered a traumatic childhood: Two of her siblings died and they write that she suffered physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her father, publishing magnate Robert Maxwell. His mysterious drowning death in 1991, they write, “made her vulnerable to Epstein, whom she met right after her father’s death.”
Maxwell’s submission includes letters of support from several of her friends and siblings, including, Kevin, Ian, Isabel and Christine Maxwell. As the Herald previously reported, several of those siblings were the beneficiaries of transactions facilitated by a financial company called La Hougue based on the island of Jersey, in the English Channel. Documents from the Jersey financial company showed Kevin and Ian’s signatures on documents in the company files and show numerous unreported stock trades and irregular financial transactions that experts say appeared to be “badges of fraud.”
The letters of support also included one written by Jeffrey Roth, who identified himself as Ghislaine Maxwell’s cousin and an employee of the New York Times.
Danielle Rhoades Ha, a spokesperson for the New York Times, said that Roth is an “employee in our archives who has no direct or indirect role in our coverage,” and declined to comment further. Roth did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Absent from the letters of support was Maxwell’s reported husband, Scott Borgerson. While Maxwell has never confirmed the relationship, media reports suggested that the two were married and Maxwell’s spouse offered a letter of support for one of Maxwell’s four requests to be released on bail.
