Trump pardoned con artists, police officers and a drug dealer. Will Ghislaine Maxwell be next?

BRYAN, Texas – Since returning to the White House, Donald Trump has pardoned fraudsters, money launderers, police attackers and a drug trafficker who smuggled 400 tons of cocaine into the United States; So why not a notorious child sex trafficker?

As the traditional Christmas pardon season approaches, residents of the city surrounding a now-notorious women’s prison camp are wondering whether Trump could dare to release alive the most notorious child trafficker: Ghislaine Maxwell, an accomplice of the late Jeffrey Epstein.

“If the president released her, it would be a slap in the face to the entire justice system,” said Emily Trull, a 27-year-old life insurance salesperson and Trump voter who thinks the fact that Maxwell is even in the Bryan federal prison camp, instead of a “real” prison, is already a travesty.

Kelly Allen, 41, a legal secretary at the local Brazos County district attorney’s office, said the community still hasn’t gotten over Maxwell’s midnight arrival four months ago. “People were shocked,” he said, adding that releasing her completely would be even worse. “I don’t think it would be good.”

Trump himself has repeatedly and notably refused to rule out his old friend’s release. White House advisers do not rule it out either. The Justice Department and Bureau of Prisons did not respond to News themezone’s questions about Maxwell for many weeks.

Maxwell, through her attorney, declined an interview request, and her attorney did not respond to several questions from News themezone about the case.

Neither Trump, nor his Justice Department, nor the BOP have ever offered an explanation for how Maxwell ended up in a “Club Fed”-style minimum-security prison camp – where other inmates report she has received preferential, white-collar treatment – ​​even though bureau rules make her ineligible. In an interview with Vanity Fair published this week, Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, said that neither she nor Trump had any idea how the transfer occurred, but that Trump was “very unhappy with it,” although probably not enough to undo it.

A federal inmate who was in Bryan with Maxwell said inmates have been transferred to tougher prisons for criticizing Maxwell, and that prison officials, in their attempts to justify punishments, have tried to suggest that she is actually innocent of the charges for which a jury found her guilty four years ago.

“Everyone I spoke to was very upset and upset about this,” the inmate told News themezone on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from prison officials. “She should never have camp status, no matter what.”

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If Trump releases her in the coming weeks, even though she has served only a fraction of her 20-year sentence, it will surely provoke a backlash, particularly as congressional demands for the release of the Justice Department’s investigative files finally move forward. A new law mandating the release of the files was passed by Congress almost unanimously, despite vocal opposition from Trump and a fierce lobbying effort in the White House. The law gave the Justice Department 30 days to do so, a deadline that ends Friday.

“It is inconceivable, but not surprising, that Maxwell would receive a pardon or commutation. She has already been transferred to ‘Club Fed,’ where she apparently enjoys special privileges and advantages not available to other inmates,” said James Marsh, an attorney who has represented Epstein and Maxwell’s victims. “To wipe the slate clean, in effect, would be a slap in the face to law enforcement, the Department of Justice and, most importantly, the survivors of the Epstein-Maxwell sex trafficking conspiracy.”

A child rape participant

Key to Maxwell’s efforts to get out of prison is trying to rewrite the story of her role in Epstein’s criminal enterprise.

The Justice Department charged Epstein, who died by apparent suicide in his cell a month after his arrest in July 2019. Maxwell was indicted the following year. She did not testify on her own behalf at her trial in December 2021, after which a jury found her guilty of child sex trafficking and related conspiracy charges.

But since her sentencing hearing in June 2022, Maxwell has attempted to present herself as another victim of Epstein’s crimes, rather than a co-perpetrator.

Facing up to 55 years in prison under the law and with prosecutors asking for 30, Maxwell apologized to the victims and insisted she was one too. “The biggest regret of my life is meeting Jeffrey Epstein,” he said. “Jeffrey Epstein should have been here before all of you… He should have been here before all of you in 2005, again in 2009, again in 2019.”

U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan, however, was having none of that. He called Maxwell’s behavior “egregious and predatory” and pointed to victims’ testimony that described in graphic detail how Maxwell had touched them in joint encounters with Epstein. “Ms. Maxwell was instrumental in the abuse of several underage girls and participated in some of the abuse herself,” Nathan said.

One of his victims, Virginia Giuffre, sent a letter to the court that was read aloud at the sentencing hearing in which she addressed Maxwell directly.

“I want to make one thing clear: Without a doubt, Jeffrey Epstein was a terrible pedophile. But I would never have met Jeffrey Epstein if it weren’t for you,” wrote Giuffre, who was recruited by Maxwell in the parking lot of Trump’s Palm Beach country club, Mar-a-Lago. He died by suicide earlier this year. “For me, and for many others, you opened the gate to hell. And then, Ghislaine, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, you used your womanhood to betray us and guided us through it all.”

Nathan, in the end, did not give Maxwell 55 years in prison. He sentenced her to 20 years, an amount just above the upper end of the range recommended by the federal probation department that incorporated factors such as Maxwell’s age (61 at the time, almost 64 today) and lack of criminal history.

More field than prison

As its name suggests, the Bryan Federal Prison Camp is as much or more “camp” than “prison.”

Less than a mile from downtown Bryan and five miles from Texas A&M University, the facility is located in a quiet residential neighborhood, surrounded by an apartment complex and modest homes on small lots. A few blocks away is a playground park, where, on a recent weekday, young children enjoyed the swings. There are no watchtowers or concentric layers of barriers surrounding it. A tall chain-link fence topped with rings of barbed wire is the only real indication that a Bureau of Prisons campus lies on the other side.

Bryan’s approximately 650 inmates sleep in dormitories, rather than locked cells, and enjoy a variety of educational and exercise options. They have access to job opportunities, such as training puppies to become service dogs.

A green mesh tarp was added to the bottom two-thirds of the fence when Maxwell arrived in the early hours of August 1, according to a federal inmate who was there at the time, as a way to protect her from the paparazzi who swarmed there after news of her arrival broke.

A resident who lives across the street said the only other visible changes in the encampment since Maxwell arrived are the federal agents patrolling the neighborhood in unmarked cars.

The resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he doesn’t believe Maxwell belongs somewhere like Bryan. “No, not really. I mean, they were kids,” he said of Maxwell and Epstein’s victims.

In fact, his personal opinion is shared by the Bureau of Prisons, whose official rules state that minimum security facilities, known derisively as “Club Feds,” are designed for nonviolent inmates who have committed property crimes such as fraud and theft, or low-level drug crimes, not violent criminals or sex offenders.

Despite this, Maxwell was transferred to Bryan after meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche at a courthouse near a low-security prison in Tallahassee, Florida, where she was being held at the time. There, she told him that Trump, with whom she and Epstein had frequently socialized, had always been a “gentleman” and had done nothing wrong. He also praised Trump for taking back the White House.

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“I admire your extraordinary achievement in becoming president now,” he told Blanche, according to the transcript later released by the Justice Department. “And I like him, and I always have. So that’s the sum and substance of my entire relationship with him.”

If Maxwell’s attempts to present herself as another of Epstein’s victims failed at her sentencing hearing, she appears to have had some success in her hours with Blanche.

“She had been in prison for many, many years, and had offered to speak on many, many occasions, and was never given that opportunity. So what I did was give her that opportunity to speak,” Blanche told CNN in September.

(Blanche’s statement is false. Maxwell had the opportunity to speak to FBI and Justice Department investigators before and after her arrest in 2020, but decided not to. She had the opportunity to testify at her trial, but decided not to either.)

Maxwell’s “interviews” with Blanche, who before joining the Justice Department in January had been one of Trump’s criminal defense attorneys, took place on July 24 and 25. She was transferred from Tallahassee to Bryan exactly seven days later.

Maxwell, according to whistleblower emails obtained and released by House Democrats, is delighted with her new accommodations.

“The food is much better, the place is clean, the staff attentive and polite. I have not seen or heard the usual foul language or shouting accompanied by threats directed at the inmates by anyone,” he wrote a week after his arrival. “I feel like I’ve fallen through Alice’s looking glass in Wonderland. I’m much, much happier here and, more importantly, I’m safe.”

Maxwell has enjoyed benefits both small (access to grapefruit juice, her beverage of choice, and extra toilet paper, according to inmates) and large, such as assistance from Bryan’s warden in preparing legal documents, as Maxwell herself reported in an email.

His treatment infuriates lawyers whose clients have followed the s rules but have not been able to get that kind of treatment.

“There was no way on God’s green earth that Ghislaine Maxwell was qualified for Bryan,” said Patrick McLain, a former federal prosecutor in child sex crimes cases who is now a defense attorney in Dallas. “They’re treating Ghislaine Maxwell with princess gloves because Donald Trump wants her to keep quiet. That’s what this is all about.”

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A pardon for a monster?

Normally, someone convicted of trafficking underage girls so they could be sexually assaulted and then participating in that assault would not be a candidate for a presidential pardon. Clemency applications under previous presidents would go through a legal review that would consider factors such as the severity of the crime, the impact on victims, the amount of sentence already served and whether the inmate had expressed remorse.

Under Trump, that review process has largely disappeared, and Maxwell’s chances of getting a pardon despite his crimes could be boosted by Trump’s apparent lack of concern for what the public thinks. On his first day in office, Trump pardoned some 400 violent domestic terrorists who had assaulted police officers at the U.S. Capitol in their efforts to assist his 2021 coup attempt. The next day, he released Ross Ulbricht, who had been convicted of distributing drugs, including the deadly fentanyl, through his “Silk Road” website.

Trump ended the prosecutions and pardoned those convicted of fraud, both in cryptocurrencies and regular money.

In recent weeks, he even pardoned a drug lord, former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been convicted of smuggling more than 400 tons of cocaine into the United States. Maxwell he has the added advantage of having known Trump personally and possibly the added advantage of having information about Trump that he would prefer not to be made public.

That relationship already provided him with the extraordinary opportunity to present his case directly to the deputy attorney general, a meeting that Trump acknowledged and praised while it was taking place.

“It’s a very delicate interview. Todd Blanche is a great gentleman. He’s a great man, as well as a great lawyer. He has a big heart, but it’s already there. I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but I certainly can’t talk about pardons right now,” he told reporters on July 25.

On that occasion and each of the next half-dozen times Trump was asked about Maxwell, he specifically refused to rule out a pardon.

“I’m allowed to grant you a pardon, but no one has come to me and told me about it. No one has asked me about it,” Trump said on July 28.

“I’m allowed to do it, but no one has asked me to do it,” he said on Aug. 1, the same day Maxwell was brought to Bryan in the predawn hours. “I don’t know anything about it. I don’t know anything about the case, but I know I have the right to do it. I have the right to grant pardons.”

On October 6, the day the US Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal, Trump said: “I’d have to take a look at it… I’ll talk to the Department of Justice.”

For anyone to even acknowledge the possibility of a pardon for Maxwell, said Lisa Bloom, another attorney for Maxwell and Epstein’s victims, is in itself an abomination.

“As the federal judge said in her sentencing, Ghislaine Maxwell participated directly and repeatedly over many years in a horrific scheme to sexually abuse underage girls. She was instrumental in the abuse and participated in it herself,” Bloom said. “A pardon would be another act of abuse towards the girls who sacrificed so much to come forward and testify against her. Shame on anyone who even suggests it.”

A prison that only asks for an escape

It remains to be seen whether Trump will follow through and actually release Maxwell now, 11 months away from the 2026 midterm elections.

Republican political consultants largely agree that it would not help the party retain control of Congress. “I think that would be pretty bad,” said a former Trump campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It wouldn’t make sense. What’s the reason?”

Stuart Stevens, a high-profile Republican consultant turned Trump critic, said he can easily imagine Trump pardoning Maxwell for his own reasons, without taking into account what it could do to what voters will face next year.

She said she can imagine Trump releasing her with the explanation that it was Epstein, not Maxwell, the real villain: “She’s suffered enough. He was the criminal.”

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However, if conventional thinking prevails and Trump chooses not to release Maxwell before the midterm elections, his circumstances in a minimum-security prison camp, rather than a true prison, leave the possibility that Maxwell may decide to free himself.

“It is well known that it is easy to escape from the camps. Not even the fence surrounds the front,” said the inmate who spoke on condition of anonymity.

BOP rules about who can stay in Bryan typically discourage escape attempts. Inmates are there to serve relatively short sentences typically imposed on nonviolent white-collar criminals or are transferred there for the final months of a longer sentence. In both cases, a failed escape attempt results in a transfer to a stricter prison and another criminal charge.

However, that risk-reward calculation would not apply to Maxwell, who according to his BOP status has another 12 years in custody before his 2037 release date.

“You can literally walk out and they’re not even supposed to chase you,” the inmate said. “The guards don’t carry weapons or anything.”