The reporter who helped put Jeffrey Epstein behind bars has revealed why she thinks that Ghislaine Maxwell will eventually get a pardon.
Julie K. Brown, the award-winning Miami Herald reporter who unraveled the massive Epstein story, thinks Maxwell will be “successful” in securing some form of reprieve—whether a commutation or a pardon—for her close involvement in her onetime boyfriend’s years-long scheme to sexually exploit and abuse young girls.
“Here is why I believe this. She is the woman who knows too much,” Brown wrote on her Substack on Thursday. “And there are indications she has the goods to spill details about Epstein’s crimes and those who helped him or participated in them. This means there [are] some nervous and powerful men out there.”
Brown reported that she found a note written by Maxwell to her sister Isabel in October last year. The 64-year-old disgraced socialite is serving her 20-year sentence at a minimum-security prison in Texas, where she was transferred after a sitdown with now-Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in July.
In the email dated Oct. 19, 2025, Maxwell references Leon Black, a Wall Street billionaire and longtime Epstein client who has been accused of sexual abuse by multiple women. He has denied any wrongdoing.
“Send Leon’s emails etc stuff to Leah,” Maxwell wrote, referring to her friend and lawyer Leah Saffian. “Of course it is in the papers from Congress too. One day the spigot will dry up.”
It was not immediately clear what she meant by “Leon’s emails.” Maxwell’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Black also did not respond to request for comment.
“Does this mean Maxwell knows that when the spigot of evidence Congress has dried up, they will look to her for help?” Brown pondered.
“There’s a good chance that Maxwell has more emails, more ‘Birthday Books’ — and that she could drop damaging information to send a message to those whose names have thus far been redacted or not released at all by the Justice Department,” she added.
Even Maxwell’s lawyer, Florida attorney David Oscar Markus, is bullish about his client’s chances of getting a pardon.
“I don’t know what the percentages are,” he previously told Politico. “There’s a good chance and for good reason that she would get a pardon.”
President Donald Trump, who used to be good pals with Epstein and Maxwell, has so far refused to close the door on a pardon. When asked about it last October, he told reporters that he would “have to take a look at it.”
But the mere idea of a Maxwell pardon has already rankled the MAGA base, with a growing number of them speaking out against Republican lawmakers who expressed support for clemency.
“I am shocked that some of my former Republican colleagues on the Oversight Committee are supporting pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell,” former Georgia firebrand Marjorie Taylor-Greene said. “The Epstein survivors are adamantly against her receiving a pardon as she was one of their main abusers next to Jeffrey Epstein and they say she is a serial liar.”
