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R<\/span>oll up! Roll up! The Ghislaine Maxwell Rehabilitation Tour is coming to town. You may think Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s associate and former girlfriend is now behind bars for good reason but, according to some big brains in the Maga-sphere, poor old Maxwell may have suffered a terrible miscarriage of justice.<\/p>\n Maxwell \u201cjust might be a victim\u201d, Newsmax anchor Greg Kelly mused on air recently. \u201cShe just might be. There was a rush to judgment \u2026 All right, granted, she hung out with Jeffrey Epstein, and I know that\u2019s apparently not good, but she\u2019s in jail. For how long now? Twenty years.\u201d<\/p>\n To discuss this further, Kelly brought on Alan Dershowitz, whom he introduced as \u201cone of the greatest attorneys who ever lived\u201d. Which certainly isn\u2019t how I\u2019d describe the retired Harvard professor.<\/p>\n Dershowitz, who helped procure a lenient plea deal for Epstein in 2008, also wrote an op-ed for the LA Times in 1997 headlined Statutory Rape Is an Outdated Concept, in which he argued 15 seems \u201cappropriate\u201d for the age of consent. Dershowitz suggested some \u201creasonable people\u201d might even favour 14 \u2013 which happens to be the age of some of Epstein\u2019s victims. When that op-ed resurfaced in 2019, after Epstein\u2019s arrest, Dershowitz defended it, saying he stood by \u201cthe constitutional (not moral) argument\u201d offered.<\/p>\n Dershowitz now reckons Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 on five counts of aiding Epstein in his abuse of underage girls and sentenced to 20 years in federal prison in 2022, has suffered enough. \u201cShe shouldn\u2019t have been in jail for five years for what she is alleged to have done,\u201d Dershowitz told Newsmax on Sunday. \u201cShe served more time than anybody has ever served for any comparable offence.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m sure I don\u2019t need to spell out why others seem to be attempting to rebrand Maxwell as the victim of a stitch-up. The Epstein files have turned into a disaster of Trump\u2019s own making. He hasn\u2019t been able to distract people from the story, so now there is speculation that he is trying to make some sort of deal with Maxwell. Who, by the way, had secretive conversations with Trump\u2019s department of justice last week and, on Monday, asked the supreme court to overturn her conviction, saying she was unjustly prosecuted. One can imagine a scenario in which Maxwell releases a few select details about Epstein that absolve Trump and make his enemies look bad in exchange for a pardon. (\u201cI\u2019m allowed to give her a pardon but nobody\u2019s approached me with it,\u201d Trump said on Monday.) However, for that hypothetical strategy to be successful, Maxwell\u2019s reputation needs to be rehabilitated. She would need to look like a victim rather than a monster.<\/p>\n Which is where Newsmax, and its sudden interest in Maxwell, might help. The cable news channel, which is to the right of Fox News, is essentially a pro-Trump propaganda outlet with strong financial ties to the president. Earlier this month the outlet announced that it had struck a deal for the Trump Media and Technology Group Corp to stream Newsmax on its platform. Which obviously raises a lot of conflict-of-interest questions. \u201cThis is now the Trump network,\u201d one Newsmax insider complained to the Independent last week. \u201cEven the most conservative people at Newsmax think it\u2019s a terrible look and they feel like state-run media.\u201d Also raising questions is the fact that Alex Acosta, the prosecutor who gave Epstein that plea deal in 2008, happens to be on the board of Newsmax.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know what will happen next with Maxwell, but I can tell you that I absolutely believe the women Epstein abused over anchors on Trump\u2019s propaganda channel. And I believe those women over Maxwell herself. Epstein\u2019s accusers have repeatedly been clear that Maxwell was no victim. \u201cShe didn\u2019t just procure girls for Epstein \u2013 she participated in their abuse,\u201d accuser Annie Farmer told ABC News on Monday<\/a>. Now it\u2019s looking increasingly likely that, instead of releasing the Epstein files, Trump will release Maxwell instead.<\/p>\n Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist<\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n