Ghislaine Maxwell just dropped a bombshell: 29 men connected to Jeffrey Epstein received “secret settlements” from the Department of Justice, effectively shielding them from prosecution.
In a habeas petition filed Tuesday aimed at ending her prison sentence early, Maxwell alleged that the DOJ “protected” 25 men and four potential “co-conspirators” through these covert deals, according to reporting from The Daily Beast.
THE DETAILS: The petition has immediately sparked questions about who these protected individuals are—and why the federal government would go to such great lengths to shield them from accountability for their connections to the most notorious sex trafficker of our time.
This revelation comes as the DOJ continues to drag its feet on releasing the Epstein files, despite being legally required to do so. Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act back on November 19, giving the Justice Department 30 days to release the documents in full. That deadline? Long gone. The poll numbers? Brutal.
It’s now late January, and less than one percent of the files has been made public. In a court filing Tuesday, the DOJ offered vague assurances that it expects to process the roughly two million documents “in the near term”—but provided no specific date, as the law requires.
OF COURSE: Officials claim they’re manually reviewing pages to redact victims’ names and, presumably, scrub mentions of those 29 protected individuals. So far, they’ve released about 12,285 documents totaling 125,575 pages—a drop in the bucket.
Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie have called for a special master or independent counsel to force the DOJ’s hand. “The Department of Justice is openly defying the law by refusing to release the full Epstein files,” Khanna said in a statement. “Millions of files are being kept from the public.”
BUT BUT BUT: Maxwell, who was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years for her active role in grooming and recruiting victims for Epstein, isn’t exactly a reliable narrator here. Her attorneys have been pushing for a pardon for months. And a July interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche proved “incredibly fruitful” for her—suspiciously so.
Shortly after that chat, Maxwell—one of the worst sex criminals of the century—got transferred from a Florida prison to a cushy low-security camp in Texas.
Her new accommodations include meal service in her cell, unlimited toilet paper, private visitations outside standard hours, and requests to be separated from other inmates granted at her whim. Tables and cellmates have reportedly been relocated because she asked.
WHY IT MATTERS: The American public was promised transparency on the Epstein case. Instead, we’re getting stonewalling from the DOJ, secret settlements protecting unnamed men, and a convicted sex trafficker living large while dangling information the government clearly doesn’t want released.
The question isn’t just who these 29 men are—it’s what they know, and what the Justice Department is so desperate to hide.