Staff from the House oversight and judiciary committees traveled to the minimum-security federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas, on Tuesday to investigate allegations that Ghislaine Maxwell has received preferential treatment, Democratic Reps. Robert Garcia and Jamie Raskin said in a statement.
The lawmakers said prison staff provided the committee staff with “an extensive tour of the grounds and programming of the facility.” However, they claimed that “Bureau of Prisons leadership repeatedly shut down our lines of questioning or could not provide basic information about our central concerns, including Ms Maxwell’s extraordinary treatment, allegations of sexual assault at the facility and retaliation against inmates who tried to blow the whistle.”
Garcia told CNN that the prison’s warden said that Maxwell, “of the 600-plus women that are there, she is the only convicted sex offender at that facility, and he could not answer and does not know why she was actually moved there.” The staff were not granted access to Maxwell during the visit, Garcia said.
“Uniformly, by the way, all the staff came back with the same conclusion, which is that this is a park-like campus, and Ghislaine Maxwell should not be there,” he added.
Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for her role in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking scheme. Last summer, she was transferred from a federal prison in Florida to the Bryan facility, which houses about 635 female inmates. The move came roughly a week after Maxwell was interviewed by then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche about the Epstein case, amid mounting political pressure on the Trump administration for more transparency.
Blanche has defended the transfer, saying it was necessary for Maxwell’s safety due to threats against her.
The Bureau of Prisons did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Guardian.
The congressional visit follows a November letter from Raskin to President Donald Trump, in which the lawmaker said the judiciary committee had received whistleblower information alleging that Maxwell had been receiving favorable treatment. Among the allegations were claims that Maxwell received custom-prepared meals, that her guests were permitted to bring computers, and that she had access to a puppy.
In January, Raskin and Garcia sent a letter to then-Attorney General Pam Bondi requesting permission to visit the prison and interview the warden. They said more than a dozen whistleblowers had come forward with accounts of Maxwell’s treatment, including allegations that she was allowed to use a laptop without supervision, keep more personal and legal possessions than other inmates, was provided bottled water while other inmates drank tap water, and had been granted access to staff-only areas to watch television alone.
The Bureau of Prisons said in a statement in November that “allegations of misconduct, including any suggestion of preferential treatment, are taken seriously and thoroughly investigated” through internal processes, and that violations of policy can lead to disciplinary action including firing and prosecution. The BOP’s standards of employee conduct “explicitly prohibits all staff from providing preferential treatment to any inmate,” the agency said.
Maxwell’s lawyer, David O Markus, rejected the allegations in a January statement to the New York Times. “The rule of law matters most when it protects the least popular defendant,” he said. “Humane treatment isn’t special treatment, and political prison tours don’t move the country forward.”