Ghislaine Maxwell claims 25 accomplices of Jeffrey Epstein reached ‘secret settlements’

Ghislaine Maxwell claimed in court documents that 25 male associates of Jeffrey Epstein made “secret settlements” to avoid prosecution.

The explosive allegation appeared in a December 17 habeas corpus petition submitted by Maxwell’s attorneys seeking to overturn her criminal conviction. The full petition was published online by Courthouse News Service, a news organization that covers litigation.

Maxwell, a British socialite and long-time associate of Epstein, was convicted by a federal grand jury in 2021 on five counts related to sex trafficking and grooming minors. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022. Epstein died in jail in 2019 — in what was ruled a suicide — while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking minors.

“New evidence reveals that there were 25 men with which the plaintiff lawyers reached secret settlements - that could equally be considered as coconspirators,” the petition states.

The individuals were not named, and it appears that Maxwell herself was unaware of their identities.

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“None of these men have been prosecuted and none has been revealed to Petitioner; she would have called them as witnesses had she known,” the petition states.

Her lawyers asserted that these confidential settlements support Maxwell’s argument for overturning her conviction.

“If the jury had heard of the new evidence of the collusion between the plaintiff’s lawyers and the government to conceal evidence and the prosecutorial misconduct they would not have convicted,” her attorneys wrote.

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Maxwell’s claims raise questions of whether the 25 unnamed men might be named in the Epstein files, which the Department of Justice is legally obligated to release, following the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act in November.

The act, signed into law by President Donald Trump, mandated that all of the department’s files on Epstein be released by December 19. But so far, only a small portion of the files — many of which are heavily redacted — have been published.

As of January 19, Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Justice Department has published just over 12,000 of the more than 2 million documents it must release. Bondi has said that hundreds of DOJ lawyers are working to review and publish the remaining documents.

In a court filing on Tuesday, Bondi told federal judges the department could not “provide a specific date” for when a review of the materials would be complete. She instead said they should be expected “in the near term.”

A number of high-profile individuals — including Trump, former President Bill Clinton and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers — are named in the already released files. Trump was repeatedly photographed with Epstein, including at Mar-a-Lago, in the 1990s and 2000s, and Epstein once described himself to author Michael Wolff as “Trump’s closest friend.”

The president, who has not been accused of criminal behavior, has said he kicked Epstein out of his Florida club years ago. And he has long downplayed the importance of the Epstein files, describing them as a “hoax” perpetuated by the Democrats to distract from his accomplishments.

Many Democrats, though, have said that the release of the files is of grave importance.

“I have long said the contents of the Epstein Files will shock the conscience of our nation,” Congressman Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, said on X in December. He’s since accused the DOJ of committing a “flagrant violation” of the law by failing to meet the deadline to release the files.

Some of the already released files also suggest the existence of known co-conspirators. In a series of 2019 emails, FBI employees discussed an investigation into numerous unnamed associates of Epstein.

“When you get a chance can you give me an update on the status of the 10 CO conspirators?” one email from a sender with “FBI New York” signature reads.

It’s not clear if any of these 10 individuals are among the 25 Epstein associates who Maxwell claimed reached “secret settlements.”