Trying to rationalize Maxwell’s actions evades what is truly terrifying about the dark center of the Epstein saga
D
ays after Ghislaine Maxwell met with the deputy attorney general Todd Blanche, the convicted child sex trafficker and longtime Jeffrey Epstein girlfriend and procurer was moved from a women’s federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida, to a so-called “prison camp” in Texas, a dramatically more comfortable minimum-security environment with dormitory-style housing and fewer guards, sometimes called “Club Fed”.
Maxwell’s new camp primarily houses nonviolent offenders, and the inmates there are reportedly livid, and probably not a little bit frightened, to be imprisoned with one of the world’s most notorious sex traffickers and alleged rapists. Maxwell, too, was not initially eligible for such a transfer, due to her sex offender status; connections at the Department of Justice had to waive a procedural requirement in order for the move to go through.
The transfer appears to be a reward. As Donald Trump struggles to extract himself from the continuing fallout of the Epstein scandal, Maxwell finds herself, now, in the best position that she has been in since her one-time partner Epstein died in a jail cell in 2019. Suddenly, she has something that the president wants: the ability to say, truthfully or no, that Trump had nothing to do with Epstein’s sex trafficking. The president, too, has something that Maxwell wants: the ability to issue a pardon.
