Ghislaine Maxwell could avoid serving the full 20-year sentence she received for helping Jeffrey Epstein traffic and abuse underage girls. That’s because, according to investigative reporter Tara Palmeri, she may be helping the FBI to take down Epstein’s elite collaborators.
“I think she’s probably helping them right now,” Palmeri told Joanna Coles on The Daily Beast Podcast. “I don’t think she’s going to spend all 20 years in jail.”
Palmeri, who hosted the Broken: Jeffrey Epstein podcast, spent two years reporting on the disgraced financier. She says that prosecutors are still working to build airtight cases against the “Johns”—powerful men accused of abusing girls trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell. Maxwell, she said, is helping them do it, in exchange for special treatment.
“They can’t let her out right now, there would be public outrage,” Palmeri said. “But [when] nobody’s paying attention, story’s gone away, few years, Ghislaine’s out, or ends up in some nice prison. This is what I’ve been told by law enforcement sources.”
The disgraced British socialite was arrested in July 2020 and handed a 20-year prison sentence two years later for sex trafficking. Though she was initially held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, the same prison federal detention facility where Sean “Diddy” Combs is currently awaiting sentencing, Maxwell is currently serving time at the low-security FCI Tallahassee prison in Florida.
While the idea of Epstein’s secret “client list” has long been a source of speculation, Palmeri says it doesn’t exist. What she claims is real, however, is highly sensitive video and photo evidence collected from Epstein’s house, which could still bring down some of the world’s most powerful men.
“When they first raided [Epstein’s house] for the 2006 case, they found a lot of cameras everywhere,” Palmeri said. “I think he was using that information as ‘kompromat’ to build his business, to make money.”
Kompromat is compromising material used to blackmail and control high-profile individuals like the ones Epstein associated with—a tactic thought to be employed by Russian intelligence services.
Having spoken with survivors who were brought in by the FBI to identify themselves being abused by Johns, Palmeri said she assumes the photos were taken “surreptitiously.”
The material is reportedly so graphic that it could prompt a reopening of Maxwell’s case, which is why it has not been made public.
“If prosecutors release the footage, Maxwell’s lawyers could pounce,” Palmeri said. “That’s why they’re slow-rolling it. But I’ve been told they’re still building cases.”
“I don’t think she’ll spend 20 years in jail. She has cards to play,” the journalist concluded.
