The family of convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has lashed out at prosecutors who charged her as she appeals her sentence to a U.S. court. In a statement, they called her arrest “theatrical” and suggested it was intended to save then-U.S. Attorney General William Barr from “embarrassment.” “It was a calculated publicity stunt designed specifically to criminalise her in the eyes of her future jury and the world,” the statement said, describing Maxwell as a “victim” in a “stitch-up.” In an appeal filed late Tuesday, Maxwell asked for her case to be thrown out or to be given a new trial due to what she alleges are errors in the Epstein sex abuse story that tainted her trial. Filing in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, attorney Arthur Aidala said that “the government prosecuted Ms. Maxwell as a proxy for Jeffrey Epstein” in order to quell “public outrage” over the case, according to reporting by Reuters. The 61-year-old was convicted in Dec. 2021 on five charges for her part in sex trafficking four girls for abuse by Epstein for a decade from 1994.