Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell sent a mystery USB drive to the Justice Department days after Melania Trump sought to distance herself from the pair’s heinous sex crimes.
The disgraced former socialite sent the USB on April 16 in a fresh attempt to quash her criminal conviction and 20-year jail sentence for helping Epstein recruit and abuse women and girls.
While the details of the electronic files are not known, the timing of it—seven days after the first lady delivered a surprise statement about Epstein and Maxwell—raised eyebrows across Washington.
In her April 9 statement, Melania Trump denied any ties to Epstein’s crimes and demanded that “lies” being spread about her must end.
Reading from prepared remarks at the White House, she told reporters that she went to the same parties as Epstein “from time to time, since overlapping in social circles is common.”
However, she never had a relationship with Epstein or Maxwell, the first lady insisted, despite numerous photos with the pair, as well as a gushing email exchange with Maxwell being included in a recent dump of Epstein files.
“Dear G! How are you?” read one email message. “Nice story about JE in NY mag. You look great in the picture.”
The mysterious USB was received this week by Trump prosecutor Jay Clayton, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
In a letter to federal judge Paul Engelmayer, Clayton confirms receipt of the package and asks the court to give the government until June 5 to file a response.
He did not outline the details of the material Maxwell sent, but noted that her arguments appear to be “duplicative” and “meritless”.
According to Clayton, Maxwell also cited about 50 exhibits to support her claims, but only 33 were included in the package.
“Yesterday, the Government received a FedEx envelope—marked with a “ship date” of April 16, 2026—that contained a USB drive with the defendant’s amended motion and exhibits,” his letter says.
“Upon an initial review, the amended motion seems to have some overlap with the defendant’s claims in her original motion.
“Although the claims raised appear to be equally meritless, the arguments pressed by the defendant appear to be fact and document intensive and thus the Government is not in a position to assess how much of the new material is truly duplicative.”
Epstein died in a Manhattan jail in 2019 while awaiting trial for his crimes, while Maxwell was subsequently sentenced for being his accomplice, after spending years helping to recruit young girls for Epstein to sexually abuse.
One of those girls, the late Virginia Giuffre, was only 17 when she was befriended by Maxwell while working at Trump’s Mar-a-lago spa, something that the president claims led to his eventual falling out with Epstein.
“He stole her,” Trump told reporters earlier this year.
But as the political scandal over the Epstein files escalated, Maxwell was moved last July, without explanation, from her jail in Florida to a minimum security prison camp in Texas, which industry publications have listed as one of the “Best Jails in America to Serve Time.”
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche signed off on the deal after an unorthodox meeting with the 63-year-old, in which she declared that she never saw Trump acting inappropriately with Epstein.
According to a whistleblower, Maxwell has enjoyed several perks at the Texas jail, such as access to a puppy, customized meals delivered to her cell and permission to go to the exercise area after hours.
Maxwell has nonetheless sought to quash her conviction multiple times.
Last December, for example, she filed a habeas petition referencing four potential “co-conspirators” and “25 men” who allegedly reached “secret settlements” connected to Epstein’s abuse but were never indicted.
Democrats, meanwhile, say that she and the Department of Justice still have questions to answer.
“Convicted sex criminal Ghislaine Maxwell socialized with Melania from Palm Beach to Manhattan,” the Democrats Oversight Committee posted on X on Thursday.
“Emails revealed in the Epstein Files show that the two communicated. Today, the DOJ is still hiding nearly half the files. Why? What’s being hidden?”
As for the first lady, it is still not clear what prompted her surprise statement earlier this month, something that even caught the president and his aides by surprise.
However, before the bombshell announcement, Brazilian model Amanda Ungaro began messaging the first lady online, threatening to reveal alleged connections.
“She knows that I witnessed highly compromising interactions over the course of 20 years,” Ungaro said of Melania in an interview with the Courier over the weekend, without providing details.
Ungaro met Epstein when she was 17 aboard his private plane. She also made headlines earlier this year by accusing Paolo Zampolli, the father of her teenage son, Melania’s former modeling agent, and now a special envoy for Trump, of using his influence to trigger her deportation. He strongly denies this.
