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Case 1:20-cr-00330-AJN Document 142 Filed 02/04/21 Page 18 of 38
agreement is not simply a party to a contract. The Government is required to observe high
standards of integrity and honorable conduct, and the supervisory power of the court is designed
to insure that such standards are observed.”). Thus, plea agreements are construed “strictly
against the government.” United States v. Feldman, 939 F.3d 182, 189 (2d Cir. 2019) (quoting
United States v. Vaval, 404 F.3d 144, 152 (2d Cir. 2005)). “Because such agreements involve
waivers of fundamental constitutional rights, “prosecutors are held to meticulous standards of
performance.” Feldman, 939 F.3d at 189 (quoting Vaval, 404 F.3d at 153). Finally, “[t]he
prosecutor's office is an entity and as such it is the spokesman for the Government. A promise
made by one attorney must be attributed . . . to the Government.” Feldman, 939 F.3d at 190
(quoting Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150, 154 (1972)).
The government’s attempt to evade the NPA flies in the face of these time-honored, and
honorable, principles. Rather than stand behind the promises it made in the NPA, the
government tries to escape them by arguing that Ms. Maxwell has no standing to enforce them—
a position that is contradicted by the unambiguous text of the NPA as well as by clear precedent.
The government also tries to pretend that the NPA contains geographical and temporal
limitations that simply do not exist. In doing so, the government essentially turns the principles
underlying the interpretation and enforcement of such agreements on their head. Confronted
with an NPA that, in hindsight, the government wishes had been negotiated and drafted
differently, the government cannot now manufacture ambiguity where none exists and cannot
now demand that the court construe such purported ambiguity in the government’s favor, when it
is a well-established principle that it must be construed in the defendant’s favor.
Here, it is wholly unnecessary for the Court to look beyond the four corners of the NPA
to determine that it bars Ms. Maxwell’s prosecution. However, the Court can be comfortable
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Document Details
| Filename | DOJ-OGR-00002590.jpg |
| File Size | 718.5 KB |
| OCR Confidence | 94.6% |
| Has Readable Text | Yes |
| Text Length | 2,158 characters |
| Indexed | 2026-02-03 16:25:11.026901 |