Public release of Epstein records puts Maxwell under fresh scrutiny amid her claims of innocence

Days after Ghislaine Maxwell asked a judge to immediately free her from a 20-year prison sentence, the public release of grand jury transcripts from her sex trafficking case returned the spotlight to victims whose allegations helped land her behind bars.

The disclosure of the transcripts as part of the Justice Department’s ongoing release of its investigative files on Maxwell and the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein exposed how an FBI agent told grand jurors about Maxwell’s critical role in Epstein’s decades-long sexual abuse of girls and young women.

Maxwell, a British socialite and publishing heir, was convicted of sex trafficking in December 2021 after four women told a federal jury in New York City about how she and Epstein abused them in the 1990s and early 2000s. Epstein never went to trial. He was arrested in July 2019 on sex trafficking charges and killed himself a month later in his cell at a Manhattan federal jail.