Show Notes
Ghislaine Maxwell launched her first major appeal of her conviction on February 28, 2023, asking the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn her convictions or grant her a new trial. Her lawyers built the appeal around several arguments they had already raised before and after trial, most prominently that Jeffrey Epstein’s 2007 Non-Prosecution Agreement with federal prosecutors in Florida protected his potential co-conspirators and therefore should have barred the Southern District of New York from prosecuting Maxwell. The defense also argued that some of the charges were outside the applicable statute of limitations and that Maxwell had been denied a fair and impartial jury because one juror failed to disclose during jury selection that he had been sexually abused as a child. Maxwell’s attorneys additionally challenged aspects of Judge Alison Nathan’s jury instructions and sentencing calculations, arguing that errors throughout the proceeding had deprived Maxwell of a fair trial.
The appeal ultimately failed. In September 2024, the Second Circuit upheld Maxwell’s conviction and 20-year sentence, rejecting the argument that Epstein’s Florida agreement prevented prosecutors in New York from charging her. The appeals court concluded that the agreement bound the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Florida rather than every federal prosecutor in the country, and it also rejected Maxwell’s statute-of-limitations, juror-misconduct and sentencing arguments. Maxwell then sought rehearing before the full Second Circuit, but that request was denied in November 2024, pushing her legal team toward the Supreme Court. The significance of that early appeal was that Maxwell immediately made Epstein’s extraordinary 2007 deal one of the central pillars of her effort to escape her own conviction, arguing that the same agreement that had protected Epstein and unnamed potential co-conspirators years earlier should have protected her as well.
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More from The Epstein Chronicles
In July 2025, the DOJ and FBI tried to close the book on Jeffrey Epstein by claiming they had found no incriminating client list, no credible blackmail evidence, and nothing that could justify investigations of uncharged third parties. That posture collapsed after Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act by overwhelming margins and forced millions of pages into public view. Once those records were released, New Mexico reopened its criminal investigation into alleged activity at Zorro Ranch, later sued the Justice Department for access to unredacted evidence, and filed a separate civil case accusing Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn of helping facilitate and conceal Epstein’s trafficking operation. Congress continued issuing subpoenas, taking testimony, and comparing witness statements against documentary evidence, while French prosecutors opened trafficking and financial-crime investigations based on newly released material. British authorities also opened Epstein-related investigations, including a public-corruption probe involving Peter Mandelson. None of those actions automatically prove criminal guilt, but they make one thing impossible to maintain with a straight face: the idea that every meaningful investigative avenue had already been exhausted.
In July 2025, the DOJ and FBI tried to close the book on Jeffrey Epstein by claiming they had found no incriminating client list, no credible blackmail evidence, and nothing that could justify investigations of uncharged third parties. That posture collapsed after Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act by overwhelming margins and forced millions of pages into public view. Once those records were released, New Mexico reopened its criminal investigation into alleged activity at Zorro Ranch, later sued the Justice Department for access to unredacted evidence, and filed a separate civil case accusing Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn of helping facilitate and conceal Epstein’s trafficking operation. Congress continued issuing subpoenas, taking testimony, and comparing witness statements against documentary evidence, while French prosecutors opened trafficking and financial-crime investigations based on newly released material. British authorities also opened Epstein-related investigations, including a public-corruption probe involving Peter Mandelson. None of those actions automatically prove criminal guilt, but they make one thing impossible to maintain with a straight face: the idea that every meaningful investigative avenue had already been exhausted.
A federal judge handed Jeffrey Epstein survivors a significant legal victory by certifying a class-action lawsuit against FirstBank Puerto Rico and its parent company, First BanCorp. Judge Jed Rakoff ruled on October 20 that the case could proceed on behalf of all women who were abused or trafficked by Epstein between January 1, 1998, and August 10, 2019, dramatically expanding the potential reach of the litigation beyond lead plaintiff Julia Molchonova. The lawsuit alleged that FirstBank maintained more than 30 accounts connected to Epstein and related entities over roughly two decades and processed millions of dollars in transactions involving Epstein, his associates and companies tied to his operations. The survivors alleged that the bank continued doing business with Epstein despite increasingly obvious warning signs surrounding his sexual abuse and trafficking and continued servicing him even as other major financial institutions eventually terminated their relationships with him.
Jeffrey Epstein should never have received the 2007 non-prosecution agreement that allowed him to avoid a federal prosecution and instead resolve the case through extraordinarily lenient state charges in Florida. Federal investigators had developed substantial evidence involving numerous underage victims, and yet Epstein received an agreement that not only protected him from federal prosecution but also extended immunity to unnamed potential co-conspirators. Victims were kept in the dark while the agreement was negotiated, and the Justice Department’s own Office of Professional Responsibility later concluded that Alexander Acosta exercised poor judgment in resolving the federal investigation through the NPA and in failing to ensure that victims were properly informed. Whatever legal arguments Epstein’s high-powered defense team made, the result was undeniable: a wealthy, well-connected man accused of sexually abusing numerous minors received treatment that would have been almost unimaginable for an ordinary defendant facing comparable evidence. The secrecy surrounding the agreement, the breadth of the immunity language and the government’s willingness to abandon a potentially much more serious federal prosecution created a credibility problem that has never really gone away.
Les Wexner has portrayed himself as one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, claiming Epstein gradually gained his confidence, secured extraordinary control over his personal finances and ultimately misappropriated enormous amounts of Wexner family money. Wexner said the scheme became apparent in 2007, when Epstein’s legal problems in Florida were escalating and Abigail Wexner began examining the family finances more closely. Wexner publicly said Epstein had taken “vast sums,” while information later provided by his attorneys to federal investigators described the amount as several hundred million dollars; Wexner has said at least some of that money was recovered. Roughly $46 million in securities transferred from Epstein-controlled entities to an Abigail Wexner foundation was characterized as only part of the repayment. Wexner’s account was essentially that Epstein had used the sweeping power of attorney entrusted to him to enrich himself, manipulate transactions and exploit a relationship Wexner believed was legitimate. By 2026, Wexner was describing Epstein as an extraordinary con man who had deliberately cultivated his trust before abusing it.