In Conclusion From Joyce Vance's Civil Discourse substack post on July 20th.
It’s going to be another important, and probably exhausting, week. They all are these days. Last week, many of you turned out for the Good Trouble protests that cropped up across the country in honor of the late John Lewis. This week, it’s time to make some good trouble. It’s a time for conversations with people around us, especially the hard ones.
From Glenn Kirschner's (July 22nd) YouTube video (12 minutes):
To finish up this blog post, a short fiction piece written by the Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson. An amazingly plausible scenario I hope doesn't play out the way Rick wrote it.
FCI Tallahassee — September 2025
Special Access Secure Meeting Room 3A (“The STAR Room”)
Ghislaine Maxwell was no longer famous in the way she’d once loved. Infamy was all she had now, not just the infamy of prison life itself, but the longer sort, the kind where her crimes grew in imagination to something even worse than what she’d been sent down for.
It hadn’t felt then as it was described now; at first, it was naughty. Then it felt sexy, powerful. Even as she’d recruited the girls, she knew it was wrong, but Jeffrey had an effect on her. On everyone, really.
She didn’t stop, even as the girls got younger and more vulnerable. It got uglier, more seedy, and Jeffrey became more demanding and harsh.
Now, she was a blot of memory, a whispered name behind security glass, but unforgotten by the conspiracy fans, the desperate and weird men and women who wanted to know her secrets. She would have preferred to be forgotten by a world that had swallowed the headlines and then moved on to louder, uglier sins.
But that wasn’t in her power now.
For all that, she was not powerless. Not yet.
That’s why the Department of Justice had flown in on a Friday under sealed scheduling orders and moved her, silently, into a conference room that looks like it was built for narco-traffickers and foreign spies. Concrete walls. A mirror window on one wall. Two cameras, both blinking red. And one long table set like a tribunal altar.
Her ankles were shackled. Her wrists weren’t.
Two guards brought her in. One she recognized: Coosh Stoutamire, a Wakulla Florida native, a by-the-book corrections officer and a mother of five. They couldn’t have been more different, but she liked Coosh.
The other was new. Pale blue eyes. Rural thick. Tribal tats on his hands and fingers. Ex-military. Badge said Hollis. His hands looked like they’d broken horses and kneecaps.
Her lawyers were already seated, Amanda Leigh, the no-bullshit Upper West Side pit viper, and Ollie Nussbaum, all eyebrows and weary sighs. Across from them sat Todd Blanche.
Blanche wore the cold smirk of a man used to deals inked in blood. He had defended Trump, in the years before the base began to rot from the inside. Now he was back inside the government, “officially unofficially” acting as the President’s "special emissary" from Justice. He didn’t even bother with the preamble.
He slid a single piece of paper across the table.
“This is the statement we want Ms. Maxwell to sign. It reads, in part, ‘At no time did Donald J. Trump ever engage in or have knowledge of any illegal conduct related to Jeffrey Epstein, his associates, or any of the properties under federal investigation.’”
Amanda didn’t touch it. “You came all the way here for a lie.”
Blanche looked unimpressed. “We came for closure.”
“And what’s the price for this fairytale?” Nussbaum asked.
Blanche tapped the folder. “Presidential pardon. Full. Unconditional. Drafted, signed, and timestamped. Effective upon signature.”
Maxwell raised a single eyebrow. “I sign this and walk?”
“You sign this,” Blanche said, “and you disappear. In a good way. Spain. Argentina. Somewhere with coastline and no extradition treaty. Somewhere the opposite of this hellhole. We can make that happen.”
Amanda snorted. “Bullshit. You want to rewrite history. What happens when the files leak? When it’s revealed she perjured herself for a pardon? Think of that?”
Blanche shrugged. “You want to examine her…other options?”
A silence. The kind of silence that hums louder than shouting.
The woman beside Blanche - perfectly blonde, perfectly still - remained expressionless. Her presence was a quiet violation of the room’s equilibrium, an x-factor Maxwell couldn’t sort.
Maxwell finally leaned forward.
“I want to make something clear,” she said. “You are promising me my freedom if I lie for you. You want me to deny what’s already in the sealed files. Trump was Jeffrey's favorite guest. The one who didn’t need persuasion. The one who never asked ages.”
Blanche’s jaw twitched. “There are cameras in this room.”
Ghislaine smiled. “Then let the record show: he was worse than anyone knows.”
The blonde woman blinked once.
Blanche leaned in. “Ghislaine, I don’t care what you think you’re holding. I don’t care what you think justice looks like. This is not a morality play. This is asset disposal. You can do the right thing for your country. I’m offering you the only lifeline you’ll ever see.”
Maxwell sighed, whispered, “Let me see the pardon.”
Blanche looked discomfited for a beat, then slid the document across. The blonde said in a voice that sounded like honeyed darkness, “The final, signed copy is at Main Justice.”
Amanda responded. “I can’t recommend my client sign something without seeing the full, signed pardon. Todd, you know this.”
Blanche slid the folder into his briefcase.
”Last chance, take it or leave it.”
Nussbaum and Amanda stood. “We’re done here.”
“Sit,” Blanche said flatly.
Amanda didn’t.
Maxwell did not rise. “Fine. I’ll sign it.” Defeated. Shrunken. Feeling all her years and sins at once.
Blanche tapped the paper once more.
“You’re doing the right thing,” he said. “You’ll look good in retirement.”
She signed.
They stood.
The meeting ended with no handshakes.
As the guards moved to take her back, the blonde woman, nearly silent the entire meeting stepped slightly behind Blanche and leaned in toward Maxwell’s ear.
In a voice as soft as silk and as cold as chloroform, she whispered, “You’ll be taken from this facility now. Cooperate with these two officers.”
Maxwell flinched. Her eyes widened.
The woman didn’t look back.
They didn’t take her to her cell.
This was not procedure.
“Why are we turning right?” Maxwell asked as they moved down the east wing.
Hollis, walking behind her now, didn’t answer.
They passed her usual unit. Passed Medical. Passed laundry. They weren’t going to the motor pool area, or admin. Something clicked in her mind. Something dark. Something terrifying.
“Where are we going?” she asked again.
Coosh didn’t meet her eyes.
Maxwell’s breathing quickened.
“I’m not suicidal,” she said louder. “I’m a model inmate. Ask anyone. No one will believe this.”
They turned into an old storage corridor. No cameras. The air smelled of bleach and North Florida’s unique scent of earthy decay.
Coosh Stoutamire finally spoke, her voice thick and low.
“Honey,” she said, “you know what we gotta do.”
Maxwell stopped walking.
Hollis didn’t move. He just exhaled, long and slow.
Maxwell turned to face them both. “The same as Jeffrey, isn’t it?”
Hollis nodded. “You think there’s room for you out there? You’re the final thread. They don’t leave threads.”
“Will there be pain?”
Hollis sighed. “No. We all like you, Max. But if we don’t do what we gotta...it’s us next. Or our littles.”
She stared at them. “I want to speak to my lawyer. I did what they asked.”
“We’re past that, honey,” Coosh said.
“I want to speak to Amanda right now,” Maxwell said, louder. “You can’t do this. I know the rules. I will disappear. I’ll never say a word...”
Hollis stepped forward and grabbed her arm, his enormous hand wrapping around her entire bicep.
“Don’t fight,” he said. “Just…let me do my job.”
A thick arm around her neck.
“Please,” she grunted. “Please, I—”
She didn’t finish.
The next morning, the warden issued a brief statement:
“Ghislaine Maxwell, inmate 02879-509, was found unresponsive in her cell at approximately 4:14 a.m. She was pronounced dead shortly thereafter. Preliminary reports indicate suicide. No foul play is suspected.
“We also have some terrible news that has deeply affected the FCI Tallahassee family. Corrections officers Sarah “Coosh” Stoutamire and Walton Hollis were killed last night in a tragic vehicle accident just off the FCI grounds.”
The press didn't linger. A few headlines. A segment on CNN. A smirking joke on Fox. MAGA media outlet exulted. Donald Trump promised to release everything on “Famous liberal Democrat Marxist pedo Jeffrey Epstein, who I secretly helped catch.” Nothing would ever come of the promise.
Todd Blanche’s office released a statement:
“While we had no direct involvement in Ms. Maxwell’s final days, we are saddened to hear of her passing. Justice must move forward.”
Amanda Leigh tried to file an injunction. She demanded the visitor logs, the surveillance footage. But the files were sealed within hours under “national security considerations.”
The cameras in the conference room? “Data lost due to a systems update.”
The blonde woman? Never identified.
Six months later, Blanche would die of a massive, unexpected heart attack while working out at a hotel gymnasium.
And the statement Maxwell signed?
It appeared, days later, in story on Fox, leaked from DOJ.
Typed.
Signed.
Dated.
Done.
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