Elie Honig, a former federal and state prosecutor, tells the Intelligencer that convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell’s conviction could actually get erased.
“There’s a realistic chance the U.S. Supreme Court throws out Ghislaine Maxwell’s child-sex-trafficking conviction and 20-year sentence,” writes Honig. “I don’t like it any more than you do … her chances are far better than the typical Supreme Court appellant’s.”
The potential overturn has nothing to do with Maxwell’s actual guilt of sex trafficking numerous minors, said Honig. It’s more about technicalities.
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“Her primary legal argument concerns not whether she received a fair trial or her substantive guilt. It’s all about basic, anodyne principles of contract law,” said Honig. “[The] DOJ made a deal — a bad one, maybe, but a deal — and then went back on its word, Maxwell contends.”
Honig said Maxwell’s appeal stems from “the sprawling prosecutorial and political mess” around Jeffrey Epstein’s “reprehensible, indefensible 2007 nonprosecution agreement” with DOJ prosecutors in the Southern District of Florida. This was the department led by then-U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, who later became Labor Secretary under President Donald Trump.
Despite identifying at least three dozen underage trafficking victims, Honig said Acosta declined to bring any federal charges against Epstein. Instead, he gave him a nonprosecution agreement that required Epstein to plead guilty to low-level Florida state charges of solicitation of prostitution and procuring minors for prostitution. Under Acosta, Epstein served less than 13 months in a minimum-security Palm Beach County facility, said Honig, much of it free on a “work-release” program at a shadowy, newly-formed business called the “Florida Science Foundation,” at the same address as one of his attorneys.
“If you’re appalled, you should be,” writes Honig. “And it’s about to get worse.”
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This is because Acosta’s nonprosecution agreement with Epstein also extended to “other wrongdoers,” said Honig. The agreement claims: “the United States also agrees that it will not institute any criminal charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein, including but not limited to [four named individuals, none of them Maxwell].”
“This is nuts,” said Honig. “As a prosecutor, I never offered or even heard of a deal like this one, which broadly protects not only the defendant but also some undefined set of co-conspirators, regardless of the severity of their conduct. Yet Acosta signed off on this bespoke arrangement, which promised to benefit unknown numbers of Epstein-enabling child sex traffickers.”
Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York may have picked up the case and put Epstein in prison, where he died, but Acosta’s old agreement lives on, and now Honig says Maxwell has about a “30 percent” chance of using the language of that 2007 agreement to make a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
“[A] deal’s a deal: Like it or not, DOJ promised not to prosecute co-conspirators back in 2007, and it can’t renege now by having some other U.S. attorney handle the case,” Honig writes, citing Maxwell’s argument.
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Odds are against Maxwell, Honig says, but “she’s got a substantially better chance at gaining traction in the Supreme Court than the average litigant.”
“Whatever the outcome, her appeal argument has some merit and should serve as an important reminder,” warned Honig. “No matter how horrific a defendant’s conduct, and no matter how overwhelming the proof of guilt, a cowardly, bad-faith prosecutor like Acosta can fumble it all away.”
Read the full Intelligencer report at this link.