Amid steadily-boiling, bipartisan discontent over the Trump administration’s failure to open up the Jeffrey Epstein investigative files to public scrutiny, another potential source of outrage is quietly lurking in the background: Epstein’s sex-trafficking co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, may have her conviction and 20-year sentence thrown out by the Supreme Court next June.
Maxwell’s appeal centers on the shockingly generous plea deal that then-federal prosecutor Alex Acosta gave him in 2007. In exchange for pleading guilty to two state charges in Florida, Acosta not only dropped the slam-dunk federal case against Epstein, but added a provision to his non-prosecution agreement stipulating that “the United States also agrees that it will not institute any criminal charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein.” (emphasis ours)
Maxwell’s first major hurdle is persuading the Supreme Court to hear her appeal. She’ll have stiff competition, as the high court typically entertains some 4,000 appeal applications per year, hearing only 70 of them; it takes four of the nine justices to agree on taking a case. Their decision on whether to hear Maxwell’s appeal is expected in late September.
In Maxwell’s favor, her appeal gives the court the opportunity to address a disagreement among the various regional federal appeals courts, also known as circuit courts. “The question of whether a plea agreement from one U.S. Attorney’s Office binds other federal prosecution as a whole is a serious issue that has split the circuits,” former federal prosecutor Mitchell Epner told Reuters. Epstein’s agreement was furnished by the Southern District of Florida, while Maxwell was convicted in the Southern District of New York.
🚨THERE IT IS: Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyer literally groveled over Donald Trump, calling him the “ultimate dealmaker.”
He knows which buttons to press to get a pardon. pic.twitter.com/BubJcfqMGu
— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) July 26, 2025
Maxwell answered questions from Justice Department officials about “100 different people” linked to late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, Maxwell’s lawyer David Markus said.
“If the government can promise one thing and deliver another — and courts let it happen — that erodes the integrity of the justice system,” Markus added.
“This isn’t just about Ghislaine Maxwell. It’s about whether the government is held to its word.” The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has filed an amicus brief urging the court to take the case, asserting that the Epstein non-prosecution agreement’s lack of a geographic boundary means “no part of the Department of Justice may institute criminal charges against any co-conspirator in any district.”
Working against Maxwell’s quest for a Supreme Court hearing is the fact that her appeal centers on the provision protecting “any potential co-conspirators” of Epstein, a stipulation so extraordinary that a Supreme Court ruling on the case may not fully resolve the circuit court controversy.
Finally, there’s a factor in the Supreme Court’s calculus that no justice will ever admit to. Keeping in mind these are ultimately just nine politicians in robes, the justices may want no part of a case that could end with them springing loose one of the most notorious criminals of our era.
When asked about the non-prosecution agreement as he was being vetted for serving as Trump’s Secretary of Labor, Acosta reportedly said, “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.” That quote has helped fueled widespread speculation that Epstein’s alleged provision of minors to powerful people was part of a honeypot scheme that benefitted Israel’s Mossad intelligence service.
In his recent deep dive into the Epstein case on Tucker Carlson’s podcast, Darryl Cooper underscored just how stunning was Acosta’s decision not to pursue a federal conviction in a sensational, slam-dunk case with dozens of witnesses:
“A US attorney is pretty high up…This is a career case for a prosecutor like Acosta. I mean, you’re going to be attorney general behind this case someday. You talking about a billionaire playboy — putting him away for his entire life because he’s sexually abusing underage girls for years and years. This makes your whole career. And so, to drop that — there’s only a couple people and a couple reasons that someone like him would agree to do that.”
The American people deserve to know what those reasons were. Though the House Oversight Committee has just subpoenaed Maxwell, we’d also like to see Acosta given a public grilling.
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