Stunning Epstein twist as Ghislaine Maxwell claims 29 friends cut ‘secret deals’ with DOJ

Ghislaine Maxwell claimed that 29 friends of Jeffrey Epstein were protected through “secret settlements” by the Justice Department.

The disgraced socialite filed a habeas corpus petition on Dec. 17 seeking to overturn her conviction, arguing that prosecutors made deals with Epstein associates while prosecuting her as if no such deals existed.

Maxwell alleges that 25 men entered into undisclosed deals, while four alleged co-conspirators were known to investigators but were never charged. She does not name the individuals.

“None of the four named co-conspirators or the 25 men with secret settlements have been charged,” the court filing states.

Maxwell claims that the alleged cover-up of these agreements undermined the fairness of his trial and violated his constitutional rights.

“New evidence reveals that there were 25 men with whom plaintiffs’ attorneys entered into secret deals – who could also be considered co-conspirators,” the legal document states.

“None of these men were prosecuted and none were revealed to the petitioner; she would have called them as witnesses if she had known.

In the sprawling court filing, Maxwell mounts several lines of attack forming the basis of his habeas corpus argument, including allegations of juror misconduct and suppression of evidence.

Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at the Queen’s log cabin on the Balmoral estate

Attorney General Pam Bondi testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on October 7.

She alleges that prosecutors violated the terms of Epstein’s 2007 non-prosecution agreement in Florida, which she says extended immunity to co-conspirators, and says she was prosecuted for political reasons while others escaped justice.

The 64-year-old is serving a 20-year sentence at Federal Prison Camp Bryan, a minimum-security federal women’s prison located in Bryan, Texas.

She was convicted in New York in December 2021 of sex trafficking for her role in recruiting and grooming underage girls for abuse by Epstein between 1994 and 2004.

The Justice Department said in a New York court filing Tuesday that it plans to release the Epstein files “in the near term.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi said her lawyers were in the process of redacting several million pages of documents from the files of the DOJ, FBI and U.S. attorneys’ offices.

The Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed into law by Donald Trump in November after a civil war within the Republican Party, required the DOJ to release the files by December 19.

As many as 200 attorneys from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York are involved in the review.

Even the prosecutors assigned to the high-profile Nicolas Maduro case were requisitioned as part of this operation, according to the New York Times.

Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein in a photo she gave him for his 50th birthday

But the delay sparked fury on Capitol Hill.

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Democrat Ro Khanna of California accused the DOJ of a “blatant violation” of the law.

Massie and Khanna wrote to Judge Paul Engelmayer, who oversaw Maxwell’s trial in New York, asking him to appoint an independent monitor to ensure DOJ compliance.

Engelmayer rejected that request last week, saying he did not have the authority to oversee the Justice Department.

He added that he had received letters from Epstein victims supporting the representatives’ request, which he said was “undeniably important and timely.”

The judge noted that Massie and Khanna could file a separate lawsuit or use “the tools available to Congress” to seek DOJ oversight.

Last year, the Supreme Court refused to hear Maxwell’s appeal, leaving his conviction intact.

She has now turned to what lawyers describe as “extraordinary relief” via a habeas corpus petition filed in the Southern District of New York, seeking to “vacate, vacate or correct” her sentence based on alleged constitutional violations.

The motion is a rare “collateral attack” permitted only after failed appeals and typically requiring proof of new evidence or fundamental flaws. Such challenges only succeed in exceptional cases.