On August 25, 2026, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer denied Ghislaine Maxwell’s petition to vacate her 2021 sex-trafficking conviction and 20-year prison sentence for helping Jeffrey Epstein abuse teenage girls.

Maxwell, 64, filed the petition herself, without a lawyer, in December 2025, after the Supreme Court declined to hear her appeal. She amended it in April 2026. She argued that documents made public under the Epstein Files Transparency Act showed information had been kept from her jury, and called her punishment a complete miscarriage of justice.

In a 67-page opinion, Engelmayer found most of her claims were procedurally barred because they had already been decided on appeal. He called the rest meritless, and all or almost all of them frivolous. On the new documents he was blunt: far from clearing her, he wrote, they incriminate her or reinforce the rulings she was challenging. He denied her the evidentiary hearing she wanted and declined to certify the case for appeal.

The ruling closes one of Maxwell’s last legal routes. The Second Circuit upheld her conviction in 2024. ABC News reported that her remaining options are likely limited to asking President Trump for a pardon or commutation, an idea the Senate has passed a resolution opposing.