Donald Trump seems to hope that this latest chapter of the Jeffrey Epstein saga will go away.
But putting aside that he filed a lawsuit effectively highlighting his relationship with the disgraced financier, the Supreme Court could keep Epstein top of mind into the fall and beyond if it agrees to review his associate Ghislaine Maxwell’s appeal.
Even if the justices agree to take Maxwell’s case, however, that wouldn’t necessarily mean they’re interested in the validity of the underlying charges against her, which involve conspiring with Epstein to traffic minors. Rather, as savvy lawyers do when petitioning the high court, her counsel presents the issue as a general legal matter that needs a nationwide resolution, something the justices are in the business of providing.
In Maxwell’s case, that issue is whether a promise on behalf of the “United States” or the “Government” that’s made by a U.S. attorney in one district binds federal prosecutors in other districts.
That’s important to Maxwell’s case because, she argues, a nonprosecution agreement secured by Epstein in Florida should’ve barred her from being charged in New York because the agreement said, in part, that “the United States also agrees that it will not institute any criminal charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein.”
She hasn’t succeeded in her argument so far.
The federal circuit court covering New York rejected Maxwell’s challenge to her 2021 convictions. The appellate panel cited circuit precedent that says agreements only bind the U.S. attorney’s office in the district where the agreement is entered, unless it affirmatively appears that the agreement contemplates a broader restriction. There’s “nothing in the NPA that affirmatively shows that the NPA was intended to bind multiple districts,” the 2nd Circuit panel said, referring to Epstein’s nonprosecution agreement.
But in her high court petition, Maxwell said that the circuits are split on the issue and that the justices should take her case to resolve the split. The Justice Department filed its brief opposing review last week, reminding the justices that they had rejected an appeal raising a similar claim and arguing that the high court “should follow the same course here.”
Maxwell will have a chance to file a final reply brief before the justices consider her petition at a forthcoming private conference. It takes four justices to grant review, and they take up relatively few of the thousands of petitions filed annually. So, the odds are against almost any petition, and Maxwell’s is far from a sure thing for review. Even if the justices take her appeal, though, they could resolve it in a way that doesn’t help the 63-year-old, whom the federal Bureau of Prisons lists as being held in a low-security institution in Tallahassee with a 2037 release date. While the justices are still fielding emergency appeals this summer after handing down their final opinions of the term at the end of June, we might not hear whether they’ll take up Maxwell’s case until the fall. Notably, it’s not just Maxwell against the government. Adding to the notion that there are broader legal issues at play, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers filed an amicus brief urging the justices to take her appeal “to resolve the split among the circuits and ensure that defendants and their counsel can rely on the promises made by the United States in its written agreements.” Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
Latest Post
Recommended
