BREAKING: UPDATE on Epstein case at SUPREME COURT

BREAKING: UPDATE on Epstein case at SUPREME COURT

You’re watching the legal breakdown. Glenn, we have a major update here as it relates to Gileain Maxwell and the US Supreme Court. Can you explain what just happened? Yeah, so Gileain Maxwell just took her last shot to try to convince the US Supreme Court to review her conviction and she filed what’s called a reply brief, a 15page brief. basically, you know, her attorneys making her best arguments as to why they think the Supreme Court should accept her case for review. I think it’s unlikely they will do it, but you know, with this Supreme Court, who the hell knows, Brian? So, basically what happened is obviously Gain Maxwell was investigated and indicted, indicted, mind you, by the Trump administration’s Department of Justice during his first presidency. And yet we’re endlessly now hearing Donald Trump say that the Epstein and Maxwell cases were a fabrication of the Democrats. And yet, Brian, our viewers should never forget that it was Donald Trump’s Department of Justice as led by Bill Bar that criminally indicted both Jeffrey Epstein and Gileain Maxwell. She went to trial. She was convicted. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison. She appealed to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. They shot her down. they affirmed her conviction. Now she’s trying to convince the Supreme Court to take her case up and decide it. Um, so she filed her original brief. The Solicitor General’s office in the Department of Justice filed its opposition urging the Supreme Court not to take her case up for review. And just today, Gileain Maxwell filed her 15-page response basically trying to convince the Supreme Court that there’s this important split among different federal circuit courts of appeal, different federal jurisdictions that militate in favor of um the Supreme Court taking her case up to try to resolve this split. I looked at her 15-page pleading. It’s not particularly persuasive, but again, with this Supreme Court, Brian, who the hell knows what they’re going to do. What do you presume the Trump administration stance on this is going to be, or do they have to weigh in at all? Well, they already weighed in with their original brief opposing Gileain Maxwell’s request to have the Supreme Court take up the case. And now, this is basically her reply to their opposition, saying, “Not so fast. You know, we think we have the better of the argument.” So, right now, basically, the battle has been met with all of the briefs, all of the filings that are permitted under the Supreme Court rules, and now we just have to wait to see whether the Supreme Court votes to take the case up or they just reject the case. In terms of the prospect of a pardon, what do you think the Trump administration would want here if their goal is to give Galileain Maxwell a pardon? Do you think that if, for example, if the Supreme Court does agree to rehear this case and and possibly throw out her conviction, then then Trump would lose his leverage in terms of being able to dangle a pardon over Maxwell’s head because she would no longer need somebody to help her get out. Yeah. But here’s I I think the last thing Donald Trump wants right now is to extend the Epstein Maxwell saga any longer than they have to. So, you know, it seems to me the last thing Trump would want is for the Supreme Court to accept the case for review and then maybe have arguments on it next term and this thing could be kicking around for a year as the subject of discussion, you know, regarding a pending case before the Supreme Court. It seems to me, Donald Trump, you know, I feel like a pardon is in the offing, which would be a truly horrific turn of events because of all of the hundreds. Indeed, I’ve heard upwards of a thousand victims of Jeffrey Epstein and his criminal conspiracy. You know, they are having to relive this nightmare now in the news every day. So, if Donald Trump were to pardon literally the only convicted defendant in the entire Jeffrey Ebstein horrific criminal conspiracy, you know, it’s hard to envision uh a a less just, more outrageous pardon of horrific criminal conduct. Glenn, if the Supreme Court does decide to rehear this case and we do engage in another cycle where they actually do relitigate this thing in court, I know we’ve spoken about the prospect of, let’s say, Trump gets Gain Maxwell to say whatever would be beneficial to Trump in exchange for some gift. Maybe it’s a pardon, maybe it’s a reduced sentence. She would go in front of Congress and say, “Oh, you know, as far as I know, Trump wasn’t involved at all.” Is there a difference between lying to Congress and Congress doesn’t really enforce any of this? We’ve spoken about the fact that justices have lied before Congress. They nothing ever happens to them. Nominees lie before Congress, nothing ever happens to them versus going to trial, having to swear an oath, uh, opening yourself up to actual perjury charges that that really stick in the same way that lying in front of congressional panels doesn’t. Um, would that be a situation in in which Trump would be worried about what would come out because she can say whatever she needs to say to Congress, half of Congress is on Trump’s side anyway, but when you’re in a courtroom and you lie, the stakes are so much higher. Yeah. So, it seems to me that what Trump is probably most interested in, we don’t know. But, you know, I think we can use lots of data points to conclude that what Trump is always most interested in is what’s best for Donald Trump. Not Gileain Maxwell, not the American people, um, but what’s best for Donald Trump. And really, the only way for him to try to control the narrative is with the pardon power. Because listen, he has sent his former criminal defense attorney to the prison where Gileain Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for the horrific crimes she committed and was convicted of by a jury of her peers. And I think most thinking people are probably of the belief that well sure Todd Blanch Trump’s former uh defense attorney is trying to craft a story and you know lock it in from Gileain Maxwell that will at least not hurt Trump and potentially help Trump because would it surprise anybody if Todd Blanch, you know, announced to the world that not only did Galain Maxwell say Donald Trump did nothing wrong, but she said a whole lot of Democrats did a whole lot of stuff wrong. Of course, Brian, if that is the narrative that Todd Blanch tries to sell to the American people, the first question, and perhaps the only question is if, you know, if that were true, why didn’t you, the Department of Justice, Pam Bondi, release that at the earliest opportunity to exonerate Trump and make Democrats look bad? Come on, how foolish and gullible do they think we are? But I think the only way Donald Trump can control things is pardoning her when he believes the time is right, rather than running the risk of her maybe having an incentive to try to go before Congress if whatever Donald Trump does for her hasn’t satisfied her. or even, you know, more dramatic for Donald Trump would be, okay, finding a way to perhaps testify under oath in some criminal or civil proceeding and disclose everything she actually knows about, for example, who is on the Epstein client list. So, you know, as horrific as it sounds, and it is horrific, I feel like the pardon is the way that Donald Trump can best try to contain the this sort of ongoing damage. Oh, 100%. I mean, it doesn’t cost him anything. He can wield it. He can wield it, you know, he freely he can abuse it as much as he wants. He showed on day one of his presidency that he um that he pardoned 1,500 insurrectionists. Doesn’t what it’s no skin off his back to to wield a pardon. Again, it’s not coming out of his own pocket. Doesn’t cost him anything to do. And so, why not just give a pardon uh in exchange for whatever benefits him personally? This is the one instance where he doesn’t have to pay for anything. the guy’s used to shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars uh to to get what he wants. If this is an instance where he just gets to throw out get out of jail free cards and and it has no bearing on him, of course he’s going to be able to to use and abuse that that privilege. Um I I got to ask in this instance as it relates to the Supreme Court, how quickly are we going to have any update here? Impossible to say, Brian. It could be days, weeks, months. We have no way of knowing. There is no deadline for the Supreme Court. You know, not only do they sort of operate in an ethics-free environment with no mandatory rules of ethics or code of conduct that applies to them that is actually enforcable. But, you know, they do things on their own timetables. They do things at their leisure. But, you know, I if you if we believe that the six right-wing Supreme Court justices who are forever trying to, you know, do Donald Trump a solid, expand his power as the president of the United States, are interested in sort of trying to kill the story sooner rather than later. We may hear that they are rejecting um Gileain Maxwell’s request that they accept her case for review very quickly. We may hear it within a matter of weeks, but there are no deadlines that apply here. And in the event that the Supreme Court refuses to reopen this case, that would mean that Trump yet once again has all the cards to be able to play, which would, as we spoke about, very likely mean that, you know, he can wield a pardon if he needs to and not have to worry about any interference or any further litigation on this case. It’s just he gets to control the narrative, basically. Exactly. Right. And here’s the other thing. As I was reading through the brand new filing from Gileain Maxwell, I mean, can I just give our viewers a a twominute backstory here because, you know, it’s really horrific to know how we’ve come to this point. uh a US attorney down in Florida in the mid 2000s, Alex Acasta, who went on to become Donald Trump’s labor secretary, Yeah. entered into this really horrific nonprosecution agreement with Jeffrey Epstein for the crimes he was allegedly committing down there in Florida. And the nonprosecution agreement was highly unusual, not entirely unprecedented. And I can talk about why that is in a minute, but it said, “Okay, we, the US attorney’s office in Florida, will not prosecute Jeffrey Epstein for any of the crimes he may have committed. And he wants us to throw in four named co-conspirators. Basically, give them a kind of immunity, a promise not to prosecute those four named co-conspirators.” And here is the kicker, Brian. Um the the let me actually read the clause from that nonprosecution agreement so I’m not accused of misstating it. It’s stated that if Epstein successfully fulfills all of the terms and conditions of this nonprosecution agreement, the United States, the federal prosecutors in Florida also agree that it will not institute any criminal charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein, including but not limited to four of Ebstein’s named assistants. How is that, Brian, for some extraordinary ugliness in the PRA in the prosecutotorial practice by a US attorney? Now, interestingly, those four named assistants of Jeffrey Epstein, none of them included Guileain Maxwell. because there is this extra clause, you know, these four people, but not limited to these four people. You know, there are so many reasons first of all to despise this nonprosecution agreement. Now, let me complete the story. In connection with this nonprosecution agreement, Jeffrey Epstein agreed to plead guilty to two charges in violation of federal law. Solicitation of prosecution and solicitation of prosecution of a minor for which he was sentenced to 18 months. He only served 13 months. You want to hear the kicker? He was allowed 12 hours a day of work release while he was serving that sentence. So basically, he just had to go sleep in a jail cell. don’t know if they even bother locking the door or not, but it it’s so horrific and it’s so abusive of the victims in the case. But Brian, let me tell you about why this is highly unusual, but not completely unprecedented. You know, we do have large criminal conspiracy cases. We had one that was pretty notorious in DC decades ago where the kingpin of a particular criminal organization had a mom who also had some criminal exposure. and part of resolving his case with a plea and cooperation agreement involving a promise by the US attorney in DC not to prosecute his mother. So it’s not like this thing can’t be done. But you know when you have this number of victims, direct victims of Jeffrey Epstein and his many co-conspirators, it is dead wrong to resolve a case in the way Alex Aosta resolved it. But now let me bring it all back to the Gileain Maxwell filing before the Supreme Court. You know, basically she she is saying, okay, I may not have been one of the named assistants who, you know, they tried to give immunity to, but she also said, but I should just every possible co-conspirator of Jeffrey Ebstein in any federal jurisdiction, Florida, New York, or anywhere else should be bound by this agreement. And nobody should ever be prosecuted anywhere federally. And you know, that dog didn’t hunt in in court when she lost her trial. It didn’t hunt in front of the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals when she tried to raise it again. And I don’t think that dog will hunt based on the facts, the law, and the Constitution before the Supreme Court. All right. Well, all eyes, per usual, will be on the Supreme Court now to see what they opt to do. For those who are watching, if you’d like to follow along as soon as we have any update, please make sure to subscribe. The links to both of our channels are right here on the screen. It is completely free to subscribe. It’s the best way to support our work and the best way to support independent media more broadly. So, if you’re not yet subscribed to our channels, please give it a quick look and make sure to subscribe. I’m Brian Teller Cohen and I’m Glenn Kersner. You’re watching the Legal Breakdown. [Music]

Legal breakdown episode 567: @GlennKirschner2 discusses Ghislaine Maxwell appealing her case to the US Supreme Court

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