The emails that Ghislaine Maxwell has been sending
over the past several months from a minimum-security prison near
Houston are stamped sensitive but unclassified. Maxwell once cavorted
with presidents and royals; now she’s serving a 20-year prison sentence
for sex trafficking, convicted of recruiting underage girls for Jeffrey
Epstein. Her trajectory is not a happy one.
But the tone of the emails is cheerful. She revels in the privileges
she’s been granted since being transferred to a new facility by Donald
Trump’s Justice Department, and she expresses optimism about one day
freeing herself.
While telling family of her improved conditions, she
remarks that Croatia is one of her favorite vacation destinations. Among
the ebullient expressions that appear in the disgraced British
socialite’s messages, mostly to her siblings and one of her lawyers:
“Yippe skipee” (about her brother’s upcoming visit), “I hear you are a
media star!” (in reference to another sibling publicly defending her),
and “it gladdens the cockles of my heart” (when she heard from an old
friend).
The dozens of emails that I obtained, part of a cache of
communications that a nurse at the facility provided to Democrats on the
House Judiciary Committee, are notably free of regret, remorse, shame,
self-doubt.
Portions of the emails have been disclosed in recent days,
including by NBC News,
but the extent of the privileges Maxwell enjoys has not previously been
reported. The emails offer a portrait of Maxwell’s relatively
comfortable life as the scandal that put her behind bars has gripped
Trump in a political vise.
The problem for the president arises from his
administration’s determination to block public access to files about Epstein
that he once dangled to the MAGA faithful like some kind of rap sheet
for the global elite. This week, he backed down when it became clear
that he couldn’t intimidate a sufficient number of Republican
lawmakers—grudgingly reversing himself and then claiming credit for
legislation compelling the release of the files.
In July, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who previously served
as Trump’s personal defense attorney, took the highly unusual step of
visiting Maxwell behind bars. While there, he elicited this exculpatory
observation from the Epstein accomplice: “I never witnessed the
president in any inappropriate setting in any way.”
Days later, Maxwell was transferred out of a Florida prison, where
she had dealt with poor conditions, including “possums falling from the
ceiling,” as she would later recount. Her new home was the Federal
Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, a minimum-security facility that Bureau of
Prisons guidelines deem inappropriate for sex offenders.
Since arriving
there, she’s benefited from a number of unusual perks, according to the
emails as well as people with knowledge of her circumstances who spoke
with me on the condition of anonymity.
She is receiving visitors privately, in the prison chapel, instead of
in the regular visitation space. Her lawyer has gained authorization
from the warden to bring in private electronic equipment, and her legal
team has had access to drinks and snacks while working with her. Her
privileges extend to more intimate needs.
Whereas other inmates receive
just two rolls of toilet paper a week, and need to either buy more or
resort to paper towels when those run out, Maxwell has received a
special supply. Her access to communications appears uninterrupted, even
when the prison’s main phone lines are down. In August, her brother
marveled that they could be in “virtual real time communication.”
Certain benefits may seem more trivial than others, and family
members of Maxwell’s fellow inmates told me the scandal is not what she
has been allowed, but rather what their loved ones have been denied.
Local defense attorneys I consulted, including some who have represented
inmates at the facility where Maxwell is being held, were most alarmed
by the wide-ranging assistance that the warden, Tanisha Hall, appears to
be providing Maxwell as she seeks early release. Maxwell has praised
the warden in emails to family, saying Hall is “as good as they come.”
What did the warden do to earn Maxwell’s affection? Among other
things, the inmate’s emails suggest, Hall provided Maxwell with
secretarial services. When a problem with the mail arose in September,
as Maxwell worked to find a way out of jail, the warden came up with
what the inmate called a “creative solution”—her attorney could scan
documents and email them directly to the warden, “and she will scan back
my changes!”
The following month, Maxwell was typing away late one
Sunday. She was wading through attachments, and she was “struggling to
keep it all together,” she wrote in an email with the subject line
“Commutation Application,” suggesting that her team was preparing a
direct appeal to Trump. As they worked on their argument, Maxwell told
her lawyer that she would transmit relevant records “through the
warden.”
Trump, who once socialized with Epstein and Maxwell, hasn’t ruled out a pardon for her. When Maxwell was first arrested, in 2020, Trump told reporters,
“I wish her well, whatever it is.”
Earlier this month, Representative
Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, wrote a
letter to Trump demanding to know whether his administration had
discussed a commutation of Maxwell’s sentence, as well as whether his
advisers had arranged for the inmate’s special treatment in prison. “You
should not grant any form of clemency to this convicted and unrepentant
sex offender,” Raskin wrote. “Your administration should not be
providing her with room service, with puppies to play with, with federal
law enforcement officials waiting on her every need, or with any
special treatment or institutional privilege at all.”
Congressional Democrats have also sought answers from Hall, the
warden, who did not respond to my questions. A Bureau of Prisons
spokesperson told me in an email that the agency “is committed to
maintaining the highest standards of integrity, impartiality, and
professionalism in the operation of its facilities,” and that
allegations of preferential treatment are “thoroughly investigated.” The
most severe repercussions thus far have befallen Noella Turnage, the
prison nurse who sent the emails to Raskin’s office and was soon fired.
She told me that she was raised in a conservative Republican family and
was motivated not by politics but rather by outrage over Maxwell’s own
account of her cozy relationship with the warden. In a statement, a
Maxwell attorney condemned Raskin for disclosing the correspondence,
saying it was the latest example of her client’s “constitutional and
human rights being ridden roughshod over.”
Doug Murphy, a prominent Houston-based attorney, likened the warden’s
solicitousness with Maxwell to the CEO of a major company dealing
directly with a customer’s needs. “It’s way out of the norm,” he told
me. He said he could imagine only two possible explanations. The first,
which he deemed unlikely, is that the warden has a special relationship
with Maxwell. The second is that she was directed by superiors to
provide leniency to the convicted sex offender.
“And that would be really concerning,” Murphy said.
When Epstein was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges, in
2019, not many people outside rarefied social circles knew the name of
his former companion. Her father was a British publishing tycoon whose
mysterious death in 1991 generated headlines, but that hardly made her a
household name. Even when Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor,
in 2008, Maxwell didn’t draw much scrutiny.
That all changed when Epstein was arrested on federal charges and
then found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in
Lower Manhattan. Maxwell had withdrawn from public life several years
earlier, but she quickly became a stand-in for the legal accountability
Epstein had evaded. And, according to prosecutors, she had plenty of
culpability in her own right.
At trial, the government portrayed her as a
knowing accomplice to Epstein’s crimes, a predator in her own right who
established trust with a ring of girls only to offer them up to
Epstein, sometimes participating in the molestation directly.
Her
defense team argued that she was being blamed for things that Epstein
did. In 2021, a jury in New York found her guilty of sex trafficking and
other charges. The following year, she was sentenced to 20 years in
prison.
Maxwell was initially held at a federal detention facility in
Brooklyn, but then transferred in the summer of 2022 to a low-security
prison in Tallahassee (populated by women convicted of kidnapping and
providing material support to terrorism, among other charges). Maxwell
complained of poor conditions there, describing the facility as
“lawless.” She tried to make do, teaching yoga and Pilates and helping
other inmates with legal work.
This past summer, her fortunes began to change as senior members of
the Trump administration worked to tamp down a political crisis created
when they failed to live up to their own extravagant promises about
exposing the monstrous conduct of Epstein and those in his orbit.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, who had once claimed on cable television to
have a client list from Epstein sitting on her desk, said in early July
that the government would make no further disclosures from its
investigation. Meanwhile, evidence of Trump’s associations with Epstein
mounted; The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had contributed a racy letter to a book compiled by Maxwell for Epstein’s 50th birthday, in 2003.
Amid the fallout, Blanche, the No. 2 at the Justice Department, wrote
on social media that he would meet with Maxwell in search of
“information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims.”
Over the course of a two-day interview in late July, Maxwell said she
was unaware of a much-discussed client list and denied knowledge of
Epstein’s abuse.
She also heaped praise on Trump, not only absolving him
of improper conduct but also saying, “I admire his extraordinary
achievement in becoming the president now. And I like him, and I’ve
always liked him.” She said she first met Trump in the early 1990s,
through her father, who also “liked him very much.”
FPC Bryan, as Maxwell’s prison is known, houses about 650 women. It’s
surrounded by a black fence, not particularly tall or imposing. People
locked up inside have been convicted of crimes including embezzlement
and fraud. Two of the more well-known inmates are Elizabeth Holmes, the
Theranos founder convicted of defrauding investors, and Jen Shah, the
former Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star who pleaded guilty to wire fraud.
Maxwell arrived late on the final day of July, receiving her medical
check-in outside of normal hours. Other inmates began complaining
instantly that she was receiving preferential treatment, including
delivery of special meals.
Hall, the warden, told inmates not to
confront or harm her, and threatened to ship them to a harsher facility
if they stepped out of line. An inmate who was quoted in the British
newspaper The Telegraph saying that she was “absolutely
disgusted” by Maxwell’s presence was quickly transferred, the inmate’s
attorney, Patrick McLain, told me.
McLain said it’s “unheard of” for
inmates to get the kind of treatment Maxwell is receiving: “Wardens do
not get involved with individual prisoners like this.” Maxwell has
credited the warden for the conditions at the Texas facility, which she
said represents a major improvement over “Tal”—the Tallahassee prison.
“The food is legions better, the place is clean, the staff responsive
and polite.” It was safer, too, because “you are not allowed to steal,
beat people up and attack them with home made weapons.” She felt she was
finally on the right side of “Alice in Wonderlands looking glass,” she
wrote to her brother. “I am much much happier.”
Maxwell tried to keep a low profile. She instructed her brother, “You
should look like a lawyer visiting me :).” But her attorney at times
seemed to delight in the attention she was receiving. She clued Maxwell
in on paparazzi outside the prison fence. One of the photographers lying
in wait was “one of the best,” she told Maxwell, “if not THE best!”
When she first got to Texas, Maxwell was waiting to find out whether
the Supreme Court would hear her case. “I am quietly confident that the
Supreme Court case is worthy and valid and has an excellent shot,” she
wrote in August. In the meantime, she worked feverishly with her
attorney, writing in an email that the warden “would rather that I sent
all the updates through her.” In another message, she told her attorney
that the warden had records ready for her team to pick up.
She followed other legal proceedings closely. In early October, she
remarked on the four-year sentence handed down for the music mogul Sean
“Diddy” Combs, who had been convicted on sex-trafficking charges. “Hmm,”
she wrote, seeming to suggest that his punishment was lenient compared
with hers. Days later, the Supreme Court declined to hear Maxwell’s
appeal, making commutation, or some other form of clemency from Trump,
her last best hope of relief from her lengthy sentence.
Maxwell wrote cryptically in some of the messages, as if aware that
they could one day be disseminated. In one, she expressed concern about a
meeting with an unnamed individual, cautioning her attorney, “If
something is too good to be true then it isn’t.”
On other matters she was more confident, including her ability to
advocate for herself. She seemed to enjoy strategizing with her attorney
about her case, like a puzzle that could help her pass the time. She
allowed herself optimism about finding a solution. “I have faith,” she
wrote.
One day, she imagined, she would not only be released; she might even
get her own law license. To that expectation, divulged to her attorney,
she appended a playful smiley face.
Trump's hero: She knows where the girls are.
