Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at Balmoral Estate in Scotland (Image: U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York)
A federal prison consultant has revealed to The Daily Beast, in a piece entitled "Prison Is Running Massive Ghislaine Maxwell Coverup for Trump: Insider," that Ghislaine Maxwell, cohort of the late Jeffrey Epstein, was moved to a country club prison after an order came from "well above their heads."
Sam Mangel, a former inmate turned prison consultant for high-profile names like Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro told The Daily Beast podcast that the Bureau of Prisons said that in Maxwell's case, they disregarded protocol to move her to fancier digs.
According to The Daily Beast, they too the "rare step of waiving the public safety factor related to her sex crime conviction to overcome 'a very severe restriction' that would have prevented her transfer to a minimum-security prison in Texas from a federal prison in Florida."
The Supreme Court declined to hear Maxwell's appeal, meaning, minus a coveted pardon from President Donald Trump, the former socialite will serve 20 years in the Bryan, Texas federal prison camp, a privilege that Mangel says is unheard of.
“Anything involving a sexual act is the most serious—or one of the most serious—public safety factors someone can have on them, and that specifically precludes an individual from serving their time in a camp,” Mangel told The Daily Beast podcast host Joanna Coles. “I’ve helped thousands of people… They will not waive that public safety factor,” he said of the BOP. “So getting your transfer to a camp is crazy.”
Other inmates sharing dorm-like accommodations in the camp are former Real Housewives castmembers and Theranos fraud star Elizabeth Holmes. Most recently, reports have seen a very relaxed Maxwell heading to yoga class within the camp.
The August transfer of Maxwell from a Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee, Florida came following an unprecedented, hours-long interview with Trump-appointed Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
That move, Mangel said, was well coordinated and came from inside the White House.
Mangel said Trump appointees BOP Director William Marshall and Deputy Director Joshua Smith “really tried to clean everything up, get things moving in the proper direction."
“So it’s my understanding that the directive to move her to a minimum security camp, Bryan, came from well above their heads,” he said.
Mangel said that whateve Maxwell promised Blanche was well rewarded — and protected.
“I truly believe that once she started cooperating, the Bureau of Prisons had to move her,” he said. “It was the only solution for the Bureau of Prisons if their goal was to keep her safe and alive. If they moved her to another low-security [facility], they would have had the same challenges.”
Speculation that Trump would pardon Maxwell has been swirling, despite the president denying he even remembers Maxwell, but Mangel said that Trump likely has given Maxwell a lot already and this may just be the beginning.
“I have to imagine that getting her to Bryan was the starting point to getting her out of custody, whether through commutation or pardon. It just seems to me that you don’t move someone to that type of facility with this kind of protection and precautions if you’re not overly concerned about her safety and what she has to say and offer,” Mangel said.
“So my guess, and purely speculation, is that at some point she will receive some form of clemency.”