A United States federal judge, Paul Engelmayer, has dismissed Ghislaine Maxwell's petition to overturn her felony convictions, which she received in December 2021. The ruling, released on Tuesday, deems Maxwell's claims as "meritless" and "frivolous." Maxwell, the former girlfriend and longtime associate of late financier Jeffrey Epstein, is currently serving a 20-year sentence for her role in recruiting and sexually abusing underage girls between 1994 and 2007. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Maxwell's verdict in 2024, and the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal last October. Maxwell, representing herself, made her case under Section 2255, a federal statute that allows convicted defendants to challenge their sentences. However, Engelmayer, who did not preside over Maxwell's original trial in 2021, found her filing to be "lengthy and rambling." Much of the petition relied on documents released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA), a law passed with near-unanimous congressional support in November 2025. Maxwell argued that her constitutional rights at trial and sentencing were violated, but Engelmayer found that the material released as part of the EFTA actually incriminated her further. The judge also highlighted an inconsistency in Maxwell's account regarding her involvement with Epstein post-2002. While her petition claimed she had largely exited Epstein's household by then, a 2025 interview revealed that she continued to manage his properties and staff years later. Furthermore, Engelmayer noted that Maxwell did not implicate any other person in the child sex abuse scheme and did not even concede Epstein's culpability in her own filing. The judge described the case against her as "the epitome of a virtuous prosecution" and certified that any appeal of his ruling would not be taken in good faith.