Judge rejects Ghislaine Maxwell’s ‘frivolous’ attempt to throw out trafficking convictions after Epstein files release
In anything, Maxwell’s latest ‘frivolous’ attempt to escape her sentence only further ‘incriminates her,’ judge says
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Related: Ghislaine Maxwell discusses Epstein's relationship with Trump and whether 'the list' exists
A federal judge has rejected Ghislaine Maxwell’s “lengthy and rambling” attempt to throw out her sex trafficking convictions after
she claimed new evidence released by the Department of Justice in
connection with her associate Jeffrey Epstein proved her rights at trial
and sentencing were violated.
“Maxwell’s claims are all meritless
and all or almost all are frivolous,” according to Tuesday’s order from
New York District Judge Paul Engelmayer.
Most of her arguments,
which she filed herself while imprisoned, were already turned down in
appeals courts, while the alleged “new” evidence from the Justice
Department’s Epstein files are “largely irrelevant" to her case, the
judge said.
“On the contrary, to the extent it is relevant, far
from exculpating her, it incriminates her or reinforces the correctness
of the legal rulings Maxwell challenges,” he added.
Maxwell, who
is now representing herself in her appeals, was found guilty of
recruiting and grooming young women and girls for Epstein, who died by
suicide in prison in 2019 while awaiting his own trial on trafficking
charges.
She argued her 2021 conviction should be rendered “invalid, unsafe and infirm,” she wrote earlier this year.
The justices announced in June that they would not take up Trump’s petition seeking to overturn that verdict, stemming from a lawsuit in which Carroll alleged that Trump sexually assaulted her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s. But Trump raged against the decision and filed a last-ditch motion last month asking them to revisit the issue.
In a routine order list issued Monday, the high court turned down Trump’s rehearing request without comment or any indication of dissent. Trump’s
petition came during the justices’ summer break, so it appears they did
not discuss the filing face-to-face before rejecting it.
In July, Carroll received more than $5.6 million
from the sexual abuse and defamation case after a federal judge ordered
the money she was awarded plus accumulated interest released to her
despite Trump’s continued attempts to halt the payment.
Trump has also asked the Supreme Court to overturn a $83.3 million jury award resulting from a separate defamation lawsuit filed by Carroll. The justices are likely to indicate later this year whether they will hear arguments in that case.
Trump’s
Supreme Court challenges to both verdicts argued in part that the
verdicts were flawed because they relied on statements Trump made in 2019 about Carroll while he was serving as president and those statements should be considered immune from legal liability under the high court’s 2024 ruling granting presidents immunity for many acts they take while in office.
ProPublica is a nonprofit, investigative newsroom that exposes
corruption. We report in all 50 states and partner with local newsrooms. Our work spurs real-world impact and has received numerous awards, including nine Pulitzer Prizes.
Thomas Jarvis, now 20, was attacked twice at juvenile justice
facilities overseen by Jason Crews, a Tennessee businessman. In both
instances, facility leadership failed to report the incidents to the
state as required.
Stacy Kranitz for ProPublica
“They’re Putting Kids’ Lives at Risk”: How Abuse in a Tennessee Businessman’s Juvenile Prisons Remained Under Wraps
Locked Down: Interviews with dozens of former staff
and youth reveal how Wayne Halfway House failed to report suspected
abuse to state officials across youth prisons in Tennessee.
A Company’s Mandate: According to several former
employees at Wayne Halfway House’s youth prisons, an expectation to keep
serious incidents secret came from the top: CEO Jason Crews.
Under Investigation: Tennessee said it is investigating the incidents WPLN and ProPublica uncovered at the company’s facilities.
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
The video clip lasted less than two minutes, but Tonya Webb remembers every second as heartbreaking.
The grainy surveillance footage, dated June 29, 2024, showed a
teenager in an anti-suicide smock being dragged violently by other teens
across the floor at Middle Tennessee Juvenile Detention Center. As
guards watched, the teens pulled the smock over the boy’s head, exposing
his naked body. Then they stuffed him, limbs flailing, into a cell.
One guard pushed the door closed, locking him in, and the boy pressed
his face against the sliver of a cell window. The guard flashed the
teens a thumbs-up.
Webb, a medication supervisor at the facility, saw the video when a
co-worker showed it to her and knew she was looking at a serious
violation of state policy. An incident like this one, in which employees
encouraged youths to restrain another youth, would require staff to
notify both the state and the boy’s family within 24 hours.
Webb said she raised questions about the incident with the compliance
director for the facility. The director said she’d handle it, but after
weeks went by with no sign of a state investigation, Webb confronted
the deputy to the facility’s executive director.
“I know you’ve seen the video,” Webb recalled telling her. “Nothing’s being done about it.”
According to Webb, the deputy said, “I don’t know what you’re talking
about.” Webb found her response baffling, as word of the attack had
spread rapidly among staff and the footage was stored on the facility’s
own security system.
WPLN and ProPublica obtained a recording of the video; Webb did not
provide it. We asked the state’s Department of Children’s Services if it
received an incident report from the facility on or around June 29,
2024. The department confirmed it did not. Webb later reported the
incident to DCS.
A Tennessee businessman named Jason Crews was the executive director
of the private company that ran Middle Tennessee Juvenile Detention
Center at that time. He’s also the CEO of Wayne Halfway House, a
separate company that had employees overseeing the detention center and
that contracts with the state to operate other juvenile facilities.
Crews did not reply to written questions about this incident, nor did
his deputy and compliance director.
Interviews with dozens of former staff and youth, along with a review
of emergency call logs, company records and state documents, reveal how
Wayne Halfway House’s leaders failed to report suspected physical and
sexual abuse to state officials across Crews’ facilities and prevented
the public from learning about violent attacks by reducing the number of
911 calls. The state is now investigating incidents we uncovered.
According to Wayne Halfway House and Middle Tennessee Juvenile
Detention Center employees who worked closely with corporate executives,
there was an expectation that serious incidents be kept secret, and the
directive came from Crews.
“You always call Jason and nothing gets reported without his
permission — and that’s wrong,” said Kim Watts, the company’s former
human resources director. She was fired in 2024 when “the company
decided to go in a different direction,” according to her termination
paperwork.
Liz Ryan, who oversaw juvenile justice programs for the Biden
administration, reviewed a detailed summary of the incidents WPLN and
ProPublica compiled, the corresponding state laws and policies and the
company’s responses. “Wayne Halfway House Inc. and its leadership,
including CEO Jason Crews, appear to have demonstrated a documented
pattern of disregard for state law, federal law and professional
standards,” said Ryan, who provided training and guidance to state and
local governments about best practices for youth in the system.
“They’re putting kids’ lives at risk,” she said. “Absent immediate
and vigorous state oversight and intervention, this seems like a
disaster waiting to happen as allegations of this nature are warning
signs in need of immediate examination.”
In a statement, Wayne Halfway House said the company follows state
policy and law and “vehemently denies” that Crews or his company have
ever discouraged staff from reporting serious or life-threatening
incidents to the state or 911. It described its former employees as
“untrustworthy sources” with a “clear bias” against the company and
their allegations as “substantially flawed.”
Crews briefly spoke with the news organizations in April during a
guided tour of one of his facilities, but he subsequently declined
multiple requests for a formal interview. Wayne Halfway House provided
detailed responses in writing to three rounds of questions.
DCS said that confidentiality laws limit the agency from commenting
publicly about specific youth or investigations, but that it is looking
into these incidents. “DCS is comparing the information provided with
Department and provider records to determine whether required incident
and abuse reports were made, whether appropriate medical care and
notifications occurred and what actions were taken in response,” the
agency said in a written statement. The results of its investigation
will not be made public, it said.
Over much of the last decade, Tennessee has pushed to expand juvenile
prison capacity — and to do so, it turned to Crews. Most youth in state
custody for committing crimes are held in his facilities, which
accommodate nearly 300.
About six weeks after the incident with the teen in the video, the
state gave Wayne Halfway House a more lucrative contract to turn Middle
Tennessee Juvenile Detention Center, located an hour south of Nashville,
from a juvenile jail into a prison. Crews now runs all three of
Tennessee’s highest-security youth prisons.
Jarvis;
his mother, Crystal Smith, center; and his grandmother Chris Stone
stand with their family dogs, Trip, left, and Pepper, in front of their
home in Northern Alabama. Jarvis was released from a Crews facility last
year.Stacy Kranitz for ProPublica
The youth in the video, Thomas Jarvis, recently turned 20. He recalls
the attack as the worst ordeal of his years bouncing between facilities
in Tennessee. Days after the incident, he said, he was taken to a
hospital for an evaluation, then treated at a mental health crisis
center.
Jarvis buried the trauma of the attack so deep that he never told his
mother, grandmother or state caseworker, who was like a father to him.
His mother, Crystal Smith, heard about the incident for the first
time in June, when we showed her the footage. Sitting at her dining room
table in Northern Alabama, with laundry drying on the back of the
chairs, she watched in horror as her son was dragged across the screen.
“That’s my baby that they did that to,” she said. “That’s not right.”
Her elbows resting on the table and shoulders slumped, she wondered out loud what else had been kept secret.
Jason
Crews, right, at Mountain View Academy in East Tennessee. Most youth in
state custody for committing crimes are held in a facility run by
Crews.Stacy Kranitz for ProPublica
For decades, Crews was a minor player in Tennessee’s juvenile justice
system, running just two midsized facilities. But as the state sought
operators for its youth prisons, he saw an opening, he told WPLN and
ProPublica in April.
Crews’ facilities began accepting teens who other private providers
lacked the capacity or desire to handle, becoming an important resource
for the Department of Children’s Services. When the state needed a new
operator for its largest private youth prison in 2020, it gave Crews the
contract.
Mountain View Academy is a high-security facility surrounded by
barbed-wire fencing that houses youth who have committed the most
serious offenses, including rape and murder. The state also places youth
there who have committed nonviolent crimes.
Under its previous operator, Mountain View had been plagued by riots
that drew negative press and infuriated locals. Staff called police in
the sleepy East Tennessee town of Dandridge regularly for months. In one news report, the town’s mayor said the situation was “not fair to the citizens of Dandridge.”
When Crews took over the Mountain View contract, he promised to get
the facility under control. He called the facility a “beast nobody could
tame.” Especially in the first months, Crews said, he was a daily
presence at the facility, showing up every morning before the kids woke
up and helping instill a sense of structure into their routine. But
there were still riots, violence and life-threatening injuries inside
the prison, according to a lawsuit and interviews with former staff and
youth.
One major change was that under Crews, the facility’s problems were kept out of the public eye, former employees said.
The company’s written policy, in effect in early 2020,
which WPLN and ProPublica obtained, stated that staff should call 911
“immediately” during a disturbance or riot, but multiple employees said
leaders told them something different: Never call for outside help
unless Crews or his deputies gave permission. This mandate pressured
employees to handle many medical emergencies internally, without calling
for help, according to interviews with nine former employees and youth.
WPLN and ProPublica obtained the 2024 version of the company’s emergency response plan for
how to handle a riot or disturbance. The directive to call for help
immediately was no longer in that policy. “Before law enforcement or
emergency services enter our buildings at any time, Jason Crews, CEO
must and will be called, no exceptions,” the policy read. It instructed
staff to follow law enforcement’s instructions “if Law Enforcement has
been called under the authorization of Jason Crews.” A new point was
added that reads, “If possible, the disturbance is handled internally.”
In a statement, Wayne Halfway House denied that it ever prevented or
discouraged staff from “initiating emergency response in
life-threatening scenarios,” calling that allegation “categorically
false.” The company pointed to other parts of the 2024 policy, like one
for youth medical emergencies, which required staff to call 911
immediately.
The company also shared a new policy
for how to handle riots, which went into effect in August 2025 and
removes the mandate to call Crews. Now the policy says that staff should
notify facility leadership and the company’s state director before
police enter the building during a riot or disturbance. The purpose of
the plan, the company said in a statement, is to ensure leadership is
“simultaneously” notified about emergencies while staff call for help.
“Our policies prioritize providing for the safety of all involved and
putting our best resources into action when they’re needed the most,”
the statement read. “In the rare instances that law enforcement response
is required, our policies ensure appropriate staff are notified.”
Wayne Halfway House’s relationship with the police and the community
has improved, according to law enforcement. In an interview with WPLN
and ProPublica, Dandridge Police Administrative Sergeant Kevin Bunch
said, “Call volume and the amount of time that a detective has to spend
in this facility has greatly reduced since Mr. Crews’ company took
over.”
Just nine months after Crews took over Mountain View, the company’s approach to 911 calls was put to the test.
Late on Nov. 21, 2020, guard Heather Boyd sat in the facility control
room and received a radio call from a colleague begging her to call the
police. Watching on the surveillance cameras, Boyd saw more than a
dozen youth attacking a few guards. Following procedure, she tried to
call her supervisor, according to a lawsuit that she later filed against
Wayne Halfway House. When 20 minutes passed with no response, she
called 911, which sent officers to quash the attack.
Nine
former Mountain View employees and youth said that a directive not to
call 911 unless Crews or his deputies gave permission pressured
employees to handle many medical emergencies without calling for outside
help.Stacy Kranitz for ProPublica
Days later, the company fired Boyd and at least two other guards,
including one who was taken to the hospital. In an interview with WPLN
and ProPublica, Boyd said company leaders told her they were firing her
for “calling outside help” and breaking protocol. In the lawsuit, Boyd
described the unofficial policy as “gross negligence and malfeasance.”
“I thought I’d done something to save somebody’s life,” she told us.
“You shouldn’t have to choose a person’s life over your job.”
Wayne Halfway House denied many of Boyd’s claims in court, including
that the company had a policy stopping staff from calling 911 during a
life-or-death emergency and that she was wrongfully fired. Both parties
quickly settled the case. The company said in a statement that it cannot
comment about the settlement agreement due to its confidentiality
requirement. It denied that any of the guards were fired for calling
911.
Two experts on correctional medical care said not every emergency at a
facility like Mountain View requires a 911 call. But when it comes to
injuries, medical staff should be involved in the decision.
In February 2024, however, Mountain View nurse Brandi Buchanan said
she faced pressure not to call 911 despite her own professional
judgment. She had witnessed teens attacking a guard in a dorm, smashing
his ribs, pepper-spraying him and repeatedly kicking his head.
“We need to call the police,” Buchanan recalled telling other guards.
“I’m sure he has internal injuries.” But the guards overruled her.
“I thought I’d done something to save somebody’s life. You shouldn’t have to choose a person’s life over your job.”
Heather
Boyd, a former guard at Mountain View Academy who said company leaders
told her they were firing her for “calling outside help” and breaking
protocol
“We don’t do that,” she remembers one company veteran saying.
Instead, employees called the operations manager, who was off duty and
on a date. An agonizing 20 minutes later, she said, the manager arrived,
and his date drove the injured guard to the hospital. The operations
manager did not respond to a request for comment about this incident.
“At that point, I was like, ‘They care more about their reputation
than their employee’s literal life,’” Buchanan said. She put in her
notice shortly after.
Wayne Halfway House said in a statement to WPLN and ProPublica that
the attack was “diffused before law enforcement response was needed” and
“contained within a matter of minutes.”
The guard, Jason Zaske, suffered a lacerated spleen, a concussion and broken ribs, according to a GoFundMe set up on his behalf. “He thought he was dying,” Zaske’s wife told local media. The guard was unable to work for weeks.
Crews was angered by the wife’s public comments and wanted to fire
Zaske, according to Watts, the company’s HR director at the time, who
said she advised him not to. “I was like, ‘You can’t terminate somebody
who just got injured at work,’” Watts recalled. Zaske wasn’t fired and
went back to work at the company. He and his wife declined to comment
for this story but confirmed he no longer works there. The company did
not respond to Watts’ allegations but said it continued paying Zaske
while he was recovering without putting him on workers’ compensation,
which would have reduced his pay.
Several months after the Zaske incident, Watts was terminated by
Wayne Halfway House. At first the company said her termination was for
failing to meet job expectations, but Watts replied citing her latest
performance review in which Crews said she was “a tremendous asset to
the company.” The company sent her a revised termination letter saying
it was going in a different direction. After she left the company, Watts
filed a sex discrimination complaint against Wayne Halfway House with
the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which declined to
investigate.
In
Tennessee, facilities like Mountain View must report significant
incidents, including serious injuries to youth, within 24 hours. But
former Wayne Halfway House staff said the company failed to report grave
safety failures.Stacy Kranitz for ProPublica
WPLN and ProPublica spoke with more than three dozen former employees
of Wayne Halfway House and former residents who said they knew of
serious problems that endangered youth and staff inside the company’s
facilities. Of those, more than a dozen said that Wayne Halfway House
failed to report grave safety failures as required, preventing the state
from learning about problems in its facilities.
In Tennessee, juvenile justice providers are required to report abuse
and other serious incidents in their facilities to the state Department
of Children’s Services, which then decides whether to investigate.
Facilities must notify the state of significant incidents — including
serious injuries to youth, escapes or restraint use — within 24 hours.
Wayne Halfway House said it designates specific facility leaders to
report serious incidents directly to the state, which the company said
is “consistent with best practices.” But a dozen lower-level former
staff members said they didn’t trust management to file reports or to do
so thoroughly, and two former managers said they felt pressured by the
company not to report at all even though they were authorized to do so.
One of those managers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of
fear of career repercussions, said Crews told them to stop reporting as
much to the state because it would make the company look bad.
Separate from a facility’s requirements to DCS, Tennessee law
requires individuals to report any suspected child abuse, including
physical and sexual abuse, to the department immediately. Nine former
Wayne Halfway House staff members said they feared for their jobs if
they reported serious incidents, including some suspected cases of child
abuse, directly to the state. Several of them said they were pushed out
after doing so. “The rebuke would be harsh and sometimes up to and
including termination if we reported out,” said Mario Brown, a former
therapist at Mountain View Academy. Brown was not fired from the
company.
The company said that it did not fire staff for reporting abuse and
that staff members have an individual legal responsibility to report
child abuse and neglect to the state. Employees scared about retaliation
could report anonymously to DCS, the company said. “WHWH is well aware
that terminating an individual for them reporting incidents of this
severity would create potential legal liability for the company.”
Webb, the former medication supervisor at Middle Tennessee Juvenile
Detention Center, said that around the time when Jarvis was forced into a
cell by other teens, management failed to report another violent
altercation to the state. A surveillance video from 2024 shows the
facility administrator, Lynda Odom, grabbing a girl by her wrists,
backing her into the corner of the room and pulling her into a headlock.
“I’m grabbing your neck because you need to stop,” Odom yelled as the
girl struggled. Two other staffers helped to break them up, and one
dragged the girl away screaming.
WPLN and ProPublica obtained a recording of the video; Webb did not provide it.
Webb said she went to the company’s director of compliance, Kelly
Banks, who was visible in the video attempting to hold Odom back, and
asked her if she was going to report the restraint to the state. Banks
said she would handle it, according to Webb. Banks did not respond to
requests for comment.
Odom, who no longer works at the facility, said that she followed
proper procedure in restraining the girl and that no one had reached out
to her to investigate the incident. “There was nothing to report,” she
said when WPLN and ProPublica reached her by phone.
WPLN and ProPublica played the video for leaders at Handle With Care,
the restraint training company used by Wayne Halfway House. The company
said it “does not teach headlocks as restraint techniques.”
Crews declined to respond to questions about the incident. According
to Wayne Halfway House, Webb was later fired for creating a hostile work
environment. Webb said company leaders asked in her termination meeting
if she had kept the videos of youth being harmed; she believes the
company fired her for insisting leaders report incidents to the state.
Sexual relationships between staffers and incarcerated youth are
illegal under any circumstances, but nearly two dozen former employees
and teens said they suspected abuse was taking place in Crews’
facilities.
Five former staff members said they did not report suspected sexual
abuse as required under state law because they were scared of
retaliation from leadership, and two said they didn’t know it was a
requirement.
Two former employees, one from Mountain View and the other from
Standing Tall Music City, a Wayne Halfway House facility in Nashville,
recalled talking to company leaders about specific cases of staff
suspected of sexually abusing youth. They said they were not aware of
the incidents being reported to the state.
The former Standing Tall employee, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity out of fear of retaliation from the company, described
confronting a female guard after finding her in a room with a youth
alone. The former employee said they suspected the guard was sexually
abusing the youth and reported it to the facility administrator, hoping
he would begin an investigation. But a federal report that tracks sexual
abuse in prisons showed no employee abuse or harassment of youth was
reported to or investigated by the state in that facility in 2021.
Wayne Halfway House said it reported this incident to the state last week after WPLN and ProPublica asked the company about it.
Brown, the former Mountain View therapist, recalled a separate
incident of suspected sexual abuse, which he did go on to report: a
child whom he watched deteriorate session after session. Eventually,
Brown said, the boy told him that a nurse at the facility had sexually
assaulted him. Although Brown worried about getting fired, he reported
the alleged abuse to the state. Shortly after, the child was moved out
of the facility.
Wayne Halfway House said in a statement that it has documentation
that rebuts Brown’s version of events but cannot comment further because
of confidentiality reasons.
Brown eventually resigned. “It got to the point where this had weighed heavily on my mental health,” he said.
His main regret, he said, was leaving behind youth who trusted him.
Brown later returned to work for Wayne Halfway House, he said,
because of his dedication to the kids. He no longer works for the
company.
Jarvis spent nearly three and a half years in state custody as a teen and was released in March 2025, his family said.Stacy Kranitz for ProPublica
Years before Jarvis was dragged across the floor of Middle Tennessee
Juvenile Detention Center, he was badly injured inside another Crews
facility, according to Jarvis’ DCS case file. That time, too, the
facility failed to report the incident to the state as required.
Jarvis landed in September 2021 at Hollis Academy, Wayne Halfway
House’s flagship facility in rural Middle Tennessee. He had been there
for several weeks when the company requested DCS move him to another
provider. Right after, his case manager picked him up and took him to a
routine doctor’s appointment at the health department. His file, which
his family shared with WPLN and ProPublica, states that a medical
provider discovered he had bruises in various stages of healing covering
80% of his body. Jarvis said the other youth had assaulted him.
“With this amount of bruising staff had to be aware,” a child abuse report submitted to DCS read.
A DCS investigator looked into the case and interviewed facility
leadership. The facility, he said, never reported the injury to Jarvis’
state case manager or to the state as required. The documents don’t
mention any repercussions for the facility, and DCS said it cannot
comment because of juvenile confidentiality laws.
Wayne Halfway House declined to comment about this specific incident,
citing a youth’s right to privacy. The company said it was not able to
file a report for a youth no longer at the facility. But documents show
that Jarvis had been at the facility for weeks when the bruising
occurred.
Jarvis spent nearly three and a half years in state custody after
being charged with arson for lighting his stepdad’s three-wheeler on
fire. He was released from Mountain View in March 2025 following a court
hearing.
Incarceration seems to have only worsened his trauma, said his
grandmother Chris Stone, who took him in to live with her. Jarvis still
seems angry, Stone said, and sometimes he threatens suicide. He never
discusses what happened to him inside.
Inside her dimly lit brick home in Northern Alabama, with curtains
drawn against the summer heat, Stone wept while recalling the assault
her grandson endured while he was already at a low point. She still
struggles to understand why the facility never informed her or other
family members — and she wrestles with anger and guilt.
Sitting on the couch, she turned to her grandson, her blue eyes fixed
on him. “Thomas, with my temper, something would have went down,” she
said. She told him she never would have let the company hide what
happened.
He sat silently beside her, without meeting her eyes.
In
a private call before his confirmation vote, the AG said Trump
officials are working to make the decision ending the national right to
abortion “permanent in every single state.”
Todd Blanche during a news conference at the Department of Justice in Washington, DC, on August 5, 2026.
(Aaron Schwartz / Bloomberg)
When the Supreme Court handed down Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022, overturning Roe v. Wade,
its defenders insisted the ruling was an act of judicial restraint and a
decision that returned the question of abortion to democratic
majorities in each state. The United States’ top lawyer, Todd Blanche,
apparently has other ideas.
On a July 30 conference call hosted by the White House Faith Office
—not meant for public ears, though the audio later surfaced on
YouTube—the acting attorney general told religious leaders that the administration is working to ensure that the Dobbs
decision “becomes permanent in every single state.” He acknowledged
that “we don’t have complete victory yet,” but promised the faithful,
“Victory will be soon and it will be permanent.”
Blanche seems to have in mind a project that goes far beyond
enforcing existing federal law or upholding current state abortion laws.
Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department could use the agency as a
tool to impose abortion restrictions on all states, even those that
protect reproductive rights through their own democratic processes and
state Constitutions.
The primary tool Blanche has signaled deploying is the Comstock Act,
an archaic federal law passed in 1873 that made it a federal crime to
mail any “thing” to “procure an abortion,” including pills but also any
article used in abortion care. For most of the 20th century, the
anti-obscenity law lay dormant, superseded by Roe and regarded as an artifact of a bygone and unfortunate era. After Roe was
overturned, Biden’s Justice Department issued a formal opinion
concluding that the Comstock Act could not be used to impose a blanket
ban on mailing abortion medications, so long as the sender did not
intend the drug to be used unlawfully, which could be almost impossible
to prove.
During his confirmation hearing in July, Blanche, Trump’s nominee and former criminal defense attorney, agreed
under questioning from Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn to order a
review of that Biden-era interpretation. If the Trump DOJ rescinds the
opinion, it may be the first step in the agency’s attempting to enforce
the Comstock Act’s abortion provisions after 100 years of disuse.
Under Blanche’s leadership, mailing or receiving
mifepristone and misoprostol, the two drugs in medication abortions,
could result in federal criminal charges. That would not just affect
patients in Texas or Alabama. It would affect patients and providers in
California, Colorado, New York, Illinois—states that have not only
protected abortion but also have expanded access to it. Comstock would
apply nationwide, with no exceptions carved out by the act’s text and
with a five-year prison sentence for the first offense.
Medication abortion now accounts for the majority of all abortions in the United States. Since Dobbs, mail-order access to abortion pills, dispensed via telehealth providers operating in states with legal protections (“shield”
laws), has become a lifeline for patients in states with bans and the
predominant way in which they end pregnancies. Shield statutes, now
passed in 18 states
and Washington, DC, seek to protect providers from out-of-state
criminal, civil, and professional attack; eight shield states extend
those protections to telehealth for mailed medication abortion. To be
clear, no shield law dictates what any other state does regarding its
own abortion laws. But Blanche, on the July 30 call, signaled his DOJ
also would target those shield laws, particularly those with telehealth
protections.
The DOJ, for its part, has tried to walk back the most alarming
reading of Blanche’s remarks on the covertly recorded conference call. A
spokesperson said his comments about making Dobbs permanent in every state were “mischaracterized” and concerned only mail-order abortion drugs and not, the agency implied, a broader federal takeover of abortion policy.
That clarification raises more questions than it answers. Dobbs
said nothing about mailed abortion pills or how states might regulate
them. If Blanche’s purpose was to apply existing law, there would be no
need for a DOJ review reversing the prior administration’s opinion. The
Biden-era opinion is the status quo based on century-old cases
interpreting the act; rescinding or revising it is a new policy choice.
His own words on the faith leaders’ call—promising that the
administration is “putting practices and policies in place so that other
states and other organizations can’t attack” the choices of states with
abortion bans—suggests an agenda that sees state-level abortion
protections, like shield laws, as threats to be neutralized and a de
facto national abortion ban as the outcome to achieve.
This week, the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced his nomination on a
party-line vote. Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of
Alaska announced that they would vote against him, with Collins directly
citing his pledge to anti-abortion groups to prohibit the mailing of
abortion medication nationwide, while Murkowski similarly cited
“statements that have been made to anti-abortion groups.” But Senator
Bill Cassidy effectively sealed his confirmation by announcing shortly
after Murkowski’s statement on Friday that he would support Blanche’s
nomination.
The confirmation of Todd Blanche as attorney general will represent a new facet of the post-Dobbs
landscape. The debate over abortion access has been primarily a story
of state-level politics: ballot measures, state constitutional
amendments, legislative sessions, and court challenges fought state by
state and county by county. That landscape could change.
An attorney general committed to enforcing the Comstock Act would
shift the battleground to federal law enforcement, a domain where
neither state legislatures nor state courts have the final word. And a
DOJ that treats the interstate shipment of abortion pills as a federal
crime would, in effect, impose the most restrictive state-level
standards on the entire country. A patient in Minnesota whose doctor
prescribes pills via telehealth could find that avenue cut off even
though abortion remains legal in the state. A physician in
Massachusetts, acting under Massachusetts’s shield law, who prescribes
remotely to a patient in Idaho could face federal prosecution and jail
time.
The elected representatives of states like Michigan, Arizona, and
Nevada have chosen to protect abortion access, as have the voters in
Kansas, Montana, Kentucky, Ohio, and Vermont. An attorney general armed
with the Comstock Act and the resources of the Justice Department could
attempt to override every one of those choices.
Whatever one’s view on abortion, enforcing Comstock would be an
alarming exercise of federal power against the backdrop of unprecedented
executive overreach.
The path for Comstock enforcement is not straightforward, however. No
doubt the DOJ will be sued if it tries to revive the act for criminal
prosecutions. Searching through the mail for abortion “things” will be
expensive, intrusive, and unpopular. And the reproductive rights
movement, as it has done since Dobbs,
will advance other means to put pills in the hands of people. Still,
the reality that abortion cannot be stopped should not distract from why
Blanche made his statements in the first place: to find solidarity
with, and ultimately direct federal resources toward, an anti-abortion
movement that seeks to end abortion everywhere, no matter the costs.
By
measuring manliness by muscle and testosterone levels, the defense
secretary is peddling damaging stereotypes and legitimizing a narrow
view of masculinity.
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