After the Justice Department announced in a memo this month that “no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted” in relation to its investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, several interested factions sprung into action. MAGA loyalists voiced their outrage over the anticlimax. Democrats, watching Donald Trump’s coalition fray over scuttled conspiracy theories, called for transparency. And the family of Ghislaine Maxwell, in a statement issued on Tuesday, seemed to sense an opening.
“Our sister Ghislaine did not receive a fair trial,” they wrote. The week prior, her brother Ian had proclaimed Ghislaine’s innocence in an interview with The Spectator.
The British socialite, and Epstein ex, has been fighting her 2021 conviction on charges of facilitating the late financier’s sexual abuse; she is currently serving a 20-year sentence in a Tallahassee prison. Her lawyers claim in their appeal that a plea deal Epstein made with federal authorities in 2007, when he was sentenced to 18 months in prison for soliciting a child for prostitution, should have shielded her from prosecution as a coconspirator. After DOJ attorneys urged the Supreme Court on Monday to reject the appeal, Maxwell’s lawyer David Oscar Markus responded by situating the case in the currents that have roiled the president of late.
“I’d be surprised if President Trump knew his lawyers were asking the Supreme Court to let the government break a deal,” Markus said in a statement. “He’s the ultimate dealmaker—and I’m sure he’d agree that when the United States gives its word, it should keep it.”
“With all the talk about who’s being prosecuted and who isn’t,” he continued, “it’s especially unfair that Ghislaine Maxwell remains in prison based on a promise the government made and broke.”
Since the Epstein case exploded into the public consciousness in 2018, following the Miami Herald’s reporting on his sweetheart deal a decade prior, it has been surrounded at every turn by a shifting mix of legitimate intrigue and more ornate conspiracy. On Tuesday, Trump, among his recent efforts to quell MAGA outcry, waved away the importance of the Epstein files by claiming that they were concocted by Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and former FBI director James Comey—whose daughter, Maurene Comey, as the closest Epstein watchers often note, was one of the lead prosecutors in the cases against Maxwell and Epstein. Maurene Comey was fired from her role on Wednesday, instantly raising the temperature of the speculation. (“I was summarily fired via memo from Main Justice that did not give a reason for my termination,” Comey reportedly wrote in a memo to colleagues.)
In recent days, a sense has emerged from this miasma that Maxwell, in her unmatched proximity to Epstein, might step in and disclose where Trump and his Cabinet couldn’t or wouldn’t.
“Let her have her voice,” Lady Victoria Hervey, a British socialite and Mar-a-Lago regular, tells me, “because right now everyone is so split on what’s going on, and I think the only way to really deal with this situation, let her speak.”
Hervey is the daughter of the 6th Marquess of Bristol and initially connected with Maxwell in the ’90s London party scene; her boyfriend at the time, a restaurateur, knew Maxwell when she was an Oxford student. Hervey also dated Prince Andrew for a period, and in recent years, coinciding with her entrée into Palm Beach circles, she has been an adamant social media defender of the disgraced royal and Maxwell. “California was locked down and a lot of people were spending time in Florida,” she says. “Obviously I wanted to help find out more on this Jeffrey Epstein story.”
Hervey says she has been in touch with some of Maxwell’s lawyers and family members and that she believed an effort to secure a pardon was in the works. “I’ve met Kash Patel a couple of times,” she tells me. “I know a lot of people in the administration now.”
The anticipation surrounding Maxwell’s next moves has been amplified by some of the most notable voices in the dense ecosystem of podcasts, newsletters, and influencers that has developed around the overall Epstein saga.
“I’m no political strategist, but Maxwell is the only viable reset button,” Jessica Reed Kraus, author of the popular politics and pop-culture newsletter “House Inhabit,” wrote this week. “People don’t trust politicians or media, but they’d show up to hear Ghislaine Maxwell speak.” On Wednesday, Kraus posted a photo of the comedian and podcaster Tim Dillon wearing a T-shirt reading “Free Ghislaine” while standing beside Alex Jones.
As with so many Trump-era developments, the online discussion has quickly bled into national political discourse.
“We’re intellectually consistent in this,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said in an interview with conservative YouTube personality Benny Johnson this week. He had been asked if he would support Maxwell testifying before Congress or subpoenaing the Justice Department for the Epstein files, and offered a slight hedge. (The Speaker later voted against an effort to release the files and said his comments to Benny Johnson had been misinterpreted.)
“This isn’t my lane, I haven’t been involved in that,” he told Benny Johnson. “But I agree with the sentiment that we need to put it out there.”
