US Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island would very much like to know what in the bureaucratic Bermuda Triangle just happened here. On Friday he fired off a letter to Federal Bureau of Prisons Director William Marshall demanding an explanation for what he called “highly unusual” treatment, as reported by Yahoo. Given BOP rules, the transfer couldn’t have happened without personal approval from someone way up the chain.
In his letter, Reed asks if the Bureau approved the move at the request of President Donald Trump or another Trump administration official which is basically the political equivalent of asking if the fox personally suggested moving the henhouse next to its den. “Sexual predators shouldn’t be afforded preferential treatment,” Reed said, making it clear he wasn’t exactly impressed with the decision.
Reed noted that sex offenders are generally banned from minimum-security camps, and it takes a special waiver to get them in. Yet Maxwell somehow ended up in what Reed describes as “the least restrictive facility operated by BOP,” the kind usually saved for first-time, non-violent offenders or prisoners about to be released.
The senator also reminded Marshall that such transfers for serious felons require the personal sign-off of the Chief of the BOP’s Designation and Sentence Computation Center — a person who ultimately answers to Marshall himself.
Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence for sexually abusing and trafficking minors with Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and former Trump associate who died in custody during Trump’s first term. That connection alone has been fueling suspicion about just how coincidental any of this could possibly be.
Adding to the intrigue, Trump’s former personal lawyer Todd Blanche who now serves as the number two official at the Department of Justice reportedly met with Maxwell just days before her relocation. If this were a TV drama this is the moment when ominous music would swell the camera would slowly zoom in on a suspicious briefcase and viewers at home would start shouting oh come on at their screens.
“Ms. Maxwell’s victims and the taxpayers are owed an explanation of why BOP undertook this highly unusual transfer,” Reed wrote. He went on to say the whole thing “raises serious questions … about whether BOP is being politically pressured into reclassifying a violent felon as a low security risk against all evidence, which seems to elevate protection of President Trump’s personal reputation above public safety.”
Trump has been tangled up in the Epstein mess before. His administration once promised to release the government’s Epstein files — then didn’t. Reports say his name appears frequently in them. He has also repeatedly dodged questions about whether he would pardon Maxwell, who could, in theory, have a lot to say about his relationship with Epstein.
Reed has given the Bureau until August 20 to respond. Until then, the unanswered questions hang in the air like the smell of something that’s definitely gone bad but no one wants to admit is rotting in the fridge.
