Ghislaine Maxwell was photographed jogging behind bars in Florida recently. We hear the British socialite-turned-inmate was actually running in her prison’s official half marathon. The race at the barbed wire-encircled Federal Correctional Institution of Tallahassee included 19 inmates who ran 52 times round the prison’s track to cover 13.1 miles. No word on Maxwell’s time, or if she made the podium. Her appeals attorney, Arthur Aidala, told us the facility put the event together, since, “One of the warden’s jobs is to make it livable.” Besides distance running, he said that Maxwell is also doing “yoga and Pilates” in jail as she preps for her her appeal on March 12. The powerhouse defense attorney surmised, “She looked great, she really did. Typically my clients who are incarcerated for an extended period gain a lot of weight… their diet in prison is primary carbohydrates.” Maxwell, 62, was photographed on the track in gray sweats at the federal lock-up where she’s serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking. Besides all the exercise, life in prison for Maxwell is anything but cushy at the low security correctional institution. “Even as a visitor, going to prison is terrifying,” said Aidala, who recently met with Maxwell for six hours to discuss her appeal. He said of the Florida facility, “It’s very different than going to Rikers Island or Brooklyn House of Detention… it’s isolated, there’s barbed wire everywhere you can see. It’s very quiet, and you know you’re not leaving.” But Maxwell — who was infamously convicted in 2021 of recruiting and grooming young women to be sexually assaulted by Jeffrey Epstein — is actually hoping to leave. She arrived at her meeting with Aidala with a stack more than “two-and-a-half-feet [high] of paperwork,” he said. “She knows her case inside and out… She knows all the transcripts, the motions… She’s laser-focused on the appeal.” Maxwell will not be present at her March hearing in front of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The session will take only about a half-hour when three judges hear arguments by Maxwell’s legal team on why they think her case should be tossed, saying she didn’t receive a fair trial. In the meantime, the Oxford-educated daughter of the late press baron Robert Maxwell has also been helping women in prison who have been less fortunate, her lawyer says. “She speaks four or five languages,” pointed out Aidala. Since, “a lot of women in [the prison] only speak Spanish,” he said Maxwell has become “an interpreter, in terms of helping them read their court documents.” On the inside, “She’s clearly very popular, clearly very helpful,” he said. “She has adapted and is making the best of a horrible situation.” She’s reportedly also been writing a tell-all while locked up that she believes will clear her name, sources have previously said. Epstein in 2019 killed himself in a lower Manhattan jail cell while he awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. Maxwell resurfaced in headlines in early January when a trove of documents were rereleased without redactions in an old, since-settled defamation case brought by Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre. The court papers unmasked a slew of people who had ties to Epstein, but whose names were previously withheld in the case. Aidala has reportedly previously said his client feels it’s unfair that out of everyone involved in Epstein’s illegal dealings, the only one who has faced any consequences is herself, a woman. Aidala has also said that Maxwell was subjected to inhumane conditions when she was held in New York City before she was convicted and sent to prison in Florida.
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