Ghislaine Maxwell appeal hearing: Epstein plea deal 'voids conviction'

Ghislaine Maxwell should never have been prosecuted for committing child abuse with the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein because she was covered by an earlier plea deal that he had made with the authorities in Florida, her lawyers sought to argue on Tuesday.

Maxwell, 62, the daughter of the late disgraced press baron Robert Maxwell, was convicted in December 2021 on five charges that she recruited and groomed underage girls for Epstein, her one-time boyfriend, between 1994 and 2004. She was sentenced to 20 years and is an inmate at a low-security prison in Tallahassee, Florida.

Maxwell’s lawyer, Diana Fabi Samson, told an appeal court in Lower Manhattan that the prosecutors broke the deal Epstein had made to avoid a federal criminal case in 2007. The subsequent