Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell transferred to low-security lockup in Texas

WASHINGTON — Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend and accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, has been moved from a federal prison in Florida to a low-security prison camp in Texas, days after she was interviewed by the Justice Department and as the Trump administration has struggled to respond to persistent questions about the case.

The federal Bureau of Prisons said Friday that Maxwell had been transferred to Bryan, Texas, but did not explain the circumstances. Her attorney confirmed the move but also declined to discuss the reasons for it.

Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. She had been held at a low-security prison in Tallahassee, Fla., until her transfer to the prison camp in Texas, where other inmates include Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and Jen Shah of “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.”

Minimum-security federal prison camps house inmates the Bureau of Prisons considers to be the lowest security risk. Some don’t even have fences.

The prison camps were originally designed with low security to make operations easier and to allow inmates tasked with performing work at the prison, such as landscaping and maintenance, to avoid repeatedly checking in and out of a main prison facility.

Maxwell’s case has been the subject of heightened public focus since an outcry over the Justice Department’s statement last month saying that it would not be releasing any additional documents from the Epstein sex trafficking investigation.

Since then, administration officials have tried to cast themselves as promoting transparency in the case, including by requesting from courts the unsealing of grand jury transcripts. But it has balked at releasing the complete files in the case, stirring bipartisan criticism in Congress and among the public.

Maxwell was interviewed at a Florida courthouse over two days last week by Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche.

The House Oversight Committee has separately said that it wants to speak with Maxwell. Her lawyers said this week that she would be open to an interview but only if the panel were to give her immunity from prosecution for anything she said.

The story has focused renewed attention on President Trump’s longtime friendship with Epstein. The family of one of Epstein’s accusers, the late Virginia Giuffre, condemned Trump’s recent comments about her, in which he confirmed an account that Epstein had hired her away from a job at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.

Tucker writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.