NEW YORK (Reuters) – Ghislaine Maxwell is expected on Tuesday to ask a U.S. appeals court to throw out her conviction for helping Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse teenage girls, saying a slew of errors marred the case as prosecutors made her a scapegoat because the financier was dead.
“The government prosecuted Ms. Maxwell as a proxy for Jeffrey Epstein” to satisfy “public outrage” over the case, and worked with his accusers “to develop new allegations out of faded, distorted, and motivated memories,” Maxwell lawyer Arthur Aidala said in a statement obtained by Reuters.
A spokesman for U.S. Attorney Damian Williams in Manhattan declined to comment.
Maxwell, 61, is expected to present her legal arguments in a filing with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan.
She is serving a 20-year prison sentence after a Manhattan jury convicted her in December 2021 on five charges for recruiting and grooming four girls for abuse by Epstein between 1994 and 2004.
The daughter of deceased British media mogul Robert Maxwell is imprisoned in Tallahassee, Florida, and could be freed in July 2037 with credit for good behavior and two years she previously spent in jail.
Maxwell’s lawyers had tried to discredit her accusers and claimed that prosecutors turned the socialite’s case into a legal reckoning that Epstein, a registered sex offender, never had.
Epstein killed himself at age 66 in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019, one month after being charged with sex trafficking.
Hundreds of women claimed to be victims of Epstein’s abuse, and famous people, most notably Britain’s Prince Andrew, who were friendly with him have seen their reputations tarred or destroyed.
Many arguments in Maxwell’s appeal are expected to mirror those she made unsuccessfully before, during and after the trial.
She has claimed that Epstein’s 2007 nonprosecution agreement with federal prosecutors in southern Florida, arising from alleged abuse at his Palm Beach mansion, also immunized her.