The Trump administration’s unexpected decision to upgrade convicted Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas required them to waive federal prisoner rules that would otherwise have prohibited it.

According to MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian and Lisa Rubin, federal records show Maxwell “was technically ineligible to be transferred from to a minimum-security federal prison camp — and the Bureau of Prisons had to waive a rule to facilitate the move.”

This comes after legal analyst Allison Gill, known for her popular “Mueller She Wrote” social media account, raised similar red flags, saying it was “completely inappropriate for inmates who are in the early stages of serving their sentences,” and “I can’t help but wonder whether this is part of a deal struck between Maxwell and [Deputy Attorney General Todd] Blanche in exchange for her testimony.”

Maxwell was accused of being Epstein’s most trusted accomplice in his yearslong operation to sex traffic young girls. She helped groom girls, and at times sexually assaulted them, victims testified.

She was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Epstein, a wealth manager for the rich and powerful, was found dead of suicide in his cell in 2019 before he could be brought to trial.

The Epstein case has been a major source of friction among Trump’s own supporters, who have long fostered conspiracy theories that an Epstein “client list” would reveal any number of politicians and celebrities, presumably anti-Trump ones, who were in on the scheme. Trump’s administration fed into these theories for months before the Justice Department admitted no such list existed, sparking furious backlash that Trump and his officials have been scrambling to calm.

As part of that effort, Maxwell has been contacted for interviews in prison in the hope of getting some new revelations about Epstein’s accomplices, which has sparked widespread controversy as federal prosecutors previously characterized her as a serial liar whose testimony was not credible.