Days after Ghislaine Maxwell asked a judge to immediately free her from a 20-year prison sentence, the public release of grand jury transcripts from her sex trafficking case returned the spotlight to victims whose allegations helped land her behind bars.

The disclosure of the transcripts as part of the Justice Department’s ongoing release of its investigative files on Maxwell and the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein exposed how an FBI agent told grand jurors about Maxwell’s critical role in Epstein’s decades-long sexual abuse of girls and young women.

Maxwell, a British socialite and publishing heir, was convicted of sex trafficking in December 2021 after four women told a federal jury in New York City about how she and Epstein abused them in the 1990s and early 2000s. Epstein never went to trial. He was arrested in July 2019 on sex trafficking charges and killed himself a month later in his cell at a Manhattan federal jail.

  • pulsewidth@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    There’s a reason she was convicted and went to jail.

    And that same reason is why Trump and his admin are trying very hard to whitewash and downplay her crimes.

    The statement Epstein “killed himself” used in the article has still never been proven adequately. He was on suicide watch (found partially conscious just months beforehand, again no evidence it was by his own hands) and moved to another more secure cell - and there were four cameras pointed toward his cell that would have provided valuable evidence, two were ‘accidentally deleted’ and one was also lost as its video provided to investigators was ‘accidentally’ from the wrong section of the jail that looked identical, the original correct video deleted in the meantime before this accident was identified (‘oh gosh, whoopsie again’). The guards have been prosecuted for lying to investigators about their whereabouts during his death and falaifying claims he was checked on the mandated schedule.

    Sure are a lot of ‘accidental’ evidence deletions, false evidence, and lying guards in this story to take the Trump-admin led investigation (his fucking co-conspirator) at face value. Any genuine investigation would have to say “based on the evidence, cause of death is inconclusive”.

    • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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      3 days ago

      And all of it could be attributed to typical jailhouse incompetence/corruption. I wanted to believe it, until the recent email from Epstein to Nasser is which he implicates Trump as another guy who likes nubile young girls like they do. He also opens the email by saying that he’s chosen to take the “short route home,” seemingly indicating he intended to commit suicide.

      If you believe he was murdered, them you can’t believe the email in which Epstein flat-out implicates Trump as being the same as him and Nasser.

      I want to believe the email, so I choose to believe that Epstein killed himself.

      • Doubleohdonut@lemmy.ca
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        2 days ago

        Yeah, based on that email I now think it’s more likely that Epstein killed himself but bribed the shit out of the guards in order to be able to do it. It certainly seems to be true that putting Epstein into a jail cell historically looked the same: a rich guy trying to minimise the impact and his accountability of his crimes through bribery ans corruption. I see no reason he wouldm’t have done the same here.

      • FrostyElm@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        I’ve been paying attention but have not heard about any Epstein email that references himself, Turmp, and Nasser. A brief look through the DoJ portal doesn’t cough anything up. Can you provide a link, or tell us more so we can find it ourselves? Thanks.

        • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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          3 days ago

          Epstein Said Trump Shared Love of Young Girls in Apparent Suicide Note

          “Good luck! We shared one thing… our love and caring for young ladies and the hope they’d reach their full potential. Our president also shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by he loved to ‘grab snatch,’ whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system. Life is unfair,” he continued, signing off “J. Epstein.”

          The “grab’em by the pussy” boast seemed like phony bragging at the time, but now it’s looking like suddenly grabbing an unsuspecting woman by her crotch is his signature move. Charming.

          Of course, the DoJ is now claiming that it’s a fake, but nothing in the letter sounds implausible AT ALL, and it sure sounds like the FBI is backpedaling after this finally getting attention, after being out there since 2023.

          • FrostyElm@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            Oh, right. I knew about the letter, but thought you were talking about an email. Yeah, the letter could go either way, IMO; the most sus thing about it is the good handwriting and perfect spelling, but he had visitors daily, including his legal team, and anyone could have written it for him if his hands were shaking or for whatever reason he wanted to dictate and not write. In addition, the BoP has has possession of it for over six years now and it remains in the DoJ files: if it had ever been credibly proven fake in the feds’ own estimation it would have been noted as such at the time. Thanks for your response.

            • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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              3 days ago

              Yeah, I mischaracterized it as an email, probably because I had just read about Prince Amdrew’s E-MAIL to Maxwell, inquiring if she currently had any “inappropriate friends” for him.