Ghislaine Maxwell’s life could be in danger after she met with the Justice Department to reveal new details about Jeffrey Epstein, according to one of the top investigative reporters to have covered the case.
Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown told Daily Beast Podcast host Joanna Coles that she believes Maxwell, 63, is not safe in a Florida prison.
“It is so easy to cover up a crime in jail,” Brown said. “The cameras are broken, guards fall asleep—they are, for the most part, very corrupt."
Coles asked Brown, whose reporting on Epstein in 2018 led to renewed scrutiny on the sex offender and federal charges against him and Maxwell, whether Maxwell could be at risk after she agreed to speak to the Department of Justice last week.
“Yes, it’s possible,” Brown said. “But she wouldn’t necessarily be safe anywhere.”
Fears for Maxwell’s safety go back before she met with Trump’s personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, who is now the Deputy Attorney General of the United States.
David Markus, Maxwell’s attorney, described during a 2023 podcast episode how prison officials had followed Maxwell around with a camera after she was arrested. The guards appeared eager to ensure that Maxwell did not face the same fate as Epstein, who died in 2019 while in federal custody.
“They had a handheld camera,” Markus said. “Even when I was meeting with her in the little room, they sat outside the room with a camera... I had never experienced anything like it, and it was surreal.”
Since Epstein’s death, speculation has swirled over how such a high-profile suspect could die by suicide at a closely monitored prison days after he was placed on suicide watch.
The Justice Department affirmed suicide as his cause of death earlier this month, but MAGA conspiracies ran rampant after a video it promised was the “full raw” footage of Epstein’s jail cell had three minutes of footage missing. The DOJ also previously found that Epstein was left alone, against protocol, during the attempt, and multiple overworked guards had neglected their duties while monitoring his prison unit.
“Look at Epstein,“ Brown told Coles. ”He was probably one of the most high-profile prisoners that we’ve ever had, and he still was managed to be found dead. Anything’s possible.”
Former Daily Beast editor-in-chief Tina Brown revealed earlier this month that an FBI source had ominously warned a journalist that Epstein would never face justice.
“Epstein will never make it to trial. There are towels on the inside,” the agent told journalist Conchita Sarnoff, who had covered Epstein for the Daily Beast, just after federal officials arrested him in 2019.
A November 2023 report from the Department of Justice Inspector General found that the Federal Correctional Institute in Tallahassee, where Maxwell is being held, suffered from many of the problems that leave prisoners at risk including “weaknesses with inmate search procedures and limited security camera coverage.”
Two people were found dead at the facility—one Tallahassee federal inmate, and a man being held at the detention center—last year. No causes of death were released.
Maxwell has already faced trouble at the prison. Two inmates reportedly discovered that she had gotten a kitchen worker to give her more food to satisfy her vegan diet and they threatened her unless she spent her entire $360 commissary budget on them, according to the Daily Mail.
Maxwell then reported the two women—named “Las Cubanas” due to their Cuban heritage—to the prison, and they were sentenced to nearly 50 days in solitary confinement, the Mail reported. After the two women were released, Maxwell eventually got paranoid they would seek revenge and refused to use the showers, according to the Mail.
“It is the mission of the [Bureau of Prisons] to operate facilities that are safe, secure, and humane," a BOP spokesperson said in a statement. “We take seriously our duty to protect the individuals entrusted in our custody, as well as maintaining the safety of our employees and the community.”
Brown also told the Daily Beast Podcast that Maxwell could be asked to clear President Donald Trump’s name if she wants a deal to walk free.
“My guess is they’re going to try to find something, because this story isn’t going away for Trump,” she said. “So my guess is they’re going to try to figure out some way to have her make public a statement of some sort that Trump wasn’t involved.”
Maxwell is trying to overturn her December 2021 conviction for grooming young girls for Epstein to abuse. She argued in a filing before the Supreme Court on Monday that a 2007 plea agreement between Epstein and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Florida, which agreed not to prosecute multiple unnamed co-conspirators, also applied to her.
Trump said on Monday that he reserved the right to pardon Maxwell, though he claimed no one had approached him about it.
“Right now, it would be inappropriate to talk about it,” he said.
An attorney for Maxwell did not respond to an immediate request for comment.
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