Mystery prison move for Epstein accomplice
Notorious sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has quietly been moved to a cushy prison camp known as a 'Club Fed' as she tries to hash out a deal to divulge her sordid secrets about late pedophile ex Jeffrey Epstein.
The 63-year-old convicted child sex trafficker was transferred from a jail in Florida to the minimum-security prison camp in Bryan, Texas, north east of Austin, the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) confirmed to The New York Post on Friday.
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No reason was given for the move, but it comes days after she met Deputy Attorney-General Todd Blanche, who was Donald Trump's personal lawyer, twice while trying to seek immunity and a deal to spill her secrets about Epstein.
'We can confirm, Ghislaine Maxwell is in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) at the Federal Prison Camp (FPC) Bryan in Bryan, Texas,' BOP spokesman Donald Murphy said.
The notorious madam — who is serving 20 years for helping Epstein groom and abuse underage girls — is now in a prison for nonviolent inmates who are allowed to roam the grounds with 'limited or no perimeter fencing,' according to the BOP's website.
She will be neighbours with well-known white-collar criminals, including Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced fraudster convicted of ripping off investors in her now-defunct blood-testing company Theranos, as well as Real Housewives of Salt Lake star and convicted scammer Jen Shah.
'It's one of the best prisons for anyone to go to,' Josh Lepird, regional vice president for the prison officers' union that includes Maxwell's new camp, told the Houston Chronicle on Friday.
'When you hear people say 'Club Fed,' they're talking about places like FPC Bryan.'
A picture of convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell in prison.
Maxwell is supposed to be locked up until 2037. Yet inmates 'typically only go to a camp if you have just a couple years left,' Mr Lepird told the outlet.
'But if someone is a co-operating witness, they can request a lower security level.'
Her unexpected move from Federal Correctional Institution Tallahassee, in Florida, was handled directly by BOP officials, rather than US Marshals, according to the New York Sun, which said it included a 'brief stopover' in FCI Oakdale in Louisiana.
No reason was given for the unexpected move. Maxwell's lawyer, David Oscar Marcus, also declined to elaborate, saying, 'We can confirm that she was moved but we have no comment'.
The Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, on May 30, 2023, where Theranos' founder Elizabeth Holmes will serve her prison sentence. Holmes was ordered to begin serving prison time at the camp on May 30 after a court denied her latest request to remain free while appealing her fraud conviction. Holmes was sentenced to just over 11 years in prison for defrauding investors with her Silicon Valley start-up Theranos. (Photo by Mark Felix / AFP)
However, the sudden transfer comes a week after Mr Blanche huddled with the disgraced British socialite and her lawyer at the US Attorney's Office in Tallahassee.
It's unclear what Maxwell and Mr Blanche discussed at the meeting — or whether anything the convicted predator says would be considered credible — but her lawyer stressed afterwards that she 'honestly' answered Mr Blanche's questions.
The DOJ in 2022 expressed doubts that Maxwell could be truthful, accusing her in court papers of a 'significant pattern of dishonest conduct' and failing to take responsibility for her heinous crimes.
A Manhattan jury convicted Maxwell in 2021 on sex trafficking charges for serving as Epstein's right-hand woman — a 'sophisticated predator' that lured girls into the dead financier's orbit from at least 1994 to 2004, prosecutors noted.
Four women testified at the convicted sex fiend's trial about Maxwell courting them and trafficking them to Epstein to be sexually abused.
Ghislaine Maxwell and US financier Jeffrey Epstein. (Photo by Handout / US District Court for the Southern District of New York / AFP)
However, Maxwell's lawyers claimed she was made a scapegoat for Epstein's twisted schemes after Epstein died in a Manhattan federal jail in 2019 while awaiting his own trial.
The Trump White House has faced renewed pressure in recent weeks to release more information about the government's probe into Epstein.
US Attorney-General Pam Bondi vowed earlier this year to release a cache of Epstein files, which could include juicy information on what the feds seized from the financier's mansions. But she later backtracked, saying that no further disclosures would be warranted.
Justice Department officials are currently lobbying two New York federal judges to release grand jury testimony from investigations into both Maxwell and Epstein. But such information would only include the accounts of two law enforcement witnesses, the feds disclosed this week.
Such a disclosure, if the judges sign off, would only amount to a fraction of the 300 gigabytes of Epstein-related material that DOJ and FBI officials have said they have in their possession.
Maxwell has also offered to testify to a congressional committee about Epstein, but only if granted immunity for what she says.
President Trump has the power to pardon Maxwell or to release her from prison by commuting her sentence.
When asked earlier this week about the possibility, he didn't rule out doing so, but insisted that he had not been approached directly with a request to pardon her.
This story was published in Teh New York Post and is reproduced with permission.
Originally published as Mystery prison move for Epstein accomplice
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