WASHINGTON (AP) — Ghislaine Maxwell, previously imprisoned in Florida, has been relocated to a prison camp in Texas amid renewed interest in her criminal proceedings.
The federal Bureau of Prisons announced Maxwell’s transfer to Bryan, Texas, without offering specific reasons. Her lawyer, David Oscar Markus, confirmed the transfer but chose not to elaborate on the motivations behind it.
In 2021, Maxwell was found guilty of enticing young girls for sexual abuse by the disgraced financier, Jeffrey Epstein. She received a 20-year sentence and was initially housed in a low-security prison in Tallahassee, Florida. She has since moved to the prison camp in Texas, sharing the facility with inmates like Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and Jen Shah from “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.”
Minimum-security federal prison camps house inmates the Bureau of Prisons considers to be the lowest security risk. Some don’t even have fences.
These prison camps were designed to operate with minimal security, facilitating the management of inmates who perform essential tasks such as landscaping and maintenance without constant checks at a central prison facility.
Prosecutors contend that Epstein’s sexual crimes would not have been possible without Maxwell’s involvement, though her defense team argues she was unjustly tried and is seeking a presidential pardon from Donald Trump. They have also petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to consider her case.
There is increased public scrutiny on Maxwell’s case following the Justice Department’s recent announcement that no additional documents from the Epstein investigation would be released. This decision angered online investigators, conspiracy theorists, and Trump supporters who were eager to uncover potential evidence of a governmental cover-up.
Since then, administration officials have tried to cast themselves as promoting transparency in the case, including by requesting from courts the unsealing of grand jury transcripts.
Maxwell, meanwhile, was interviewed at a Florida courthouse over two days last week by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and the House Oversight Committee had also said that it wanted to speak with Maxwell. Her lawyers said this week that they would be open to an interview but only if the panel were to ensure immunity from prosecution.
In a letter Friday to Maxwell’s lawyers, Rep. James Comer, the committee chair, wrote that the committee was willing to delay the deposition until after the resolution of Maxwell’s appeal to the Supreme Court. That appeal is expected to be resolved in late September.
Comer wrote that while Maxwell’s testimony was “vital” to the Republican-led investigation into Epstein, the committee would not provide immunity or any questions in advance of her testimony, as was requested by her team.
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Associated Press Writers Michael Balsamo and Matt Brown contributed to this report.
