NEW YORK, Aug 25 (Reuters) – A U.S. judge rejected Ghislaine Maxwell’s bid to throw out her conviction and 20-year prison sentence for helping the late financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse teenage girls.
In a decision made public on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer said Maxwell’s claims were all meritless, and all or almost all were frivolous.
Maxwell, 64, who represented herself, challenged her December 2021 conviction and sentence in Manhattan federal court, and sought a writ of habeas corpus declaring her punishment unlawful.
Prosecutors said her latest claims were baseless or filed too late.
Maxwell said many documents disclosed earlier this year through the Epstein Files Transparency Act show that her due process rights were violated because lawyers representing Epstein’s accusers served as “De Facto Prosecutors and agents of the government.”
But the judge said this supposedly “new” evidence was largely irrelevant to Maxwell’s case.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Mark Porter)
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