HUNTER: Ghislaine Maxwell has until June 2023 to name names, but will she?

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The once elegant brunette sits rotting in a jail cell in the Florida Panhandle.

She is 60 years old and this is likely as good as it’s going to get for the foreseeable future. Her name is Ghislaine Maxwell, once the belle of the ball in London, New York and Palm Beach.

Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison in June for her role in billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s odious sex-trafficking operation that preyed on vulnerable, underage girls.

Epstein topped himself in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking. But what about his friends, you ask, his pals in perversion who lusted after teen girls?

Why didn’t Ghislaine Maxwell name names? That may still come, dear reader. The disgraced publishing heiress has until June 2023 to sing for her supper.

“I think Ghislaine has been wrestling for a long time on whether to sing or not,” author and Pulitzer Prize nominee Barry Levine told me. “People want her to name names.”

Levine — author of the seminal book on the case, The Spider: Inside the Criminal Web of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell — said that if she cooperates, the feds may “shave a couple years off her sentence.”

“Remember, her jail cell in Brooklyn was a living hell for her every day and I don’t think Ghislaine or her lawyers were exaggerating about the conditions,” Levine said, adding life at low-security FCI Tallahassee is more bearable.

“In Brooklyn, I’m sure she asked herself: ‘Is this worth it?'”

A problem for Maxwell is that the prosecution never offered her a deal and she didn’t ask for one.

Levine said the prosecution wanted a jury verdict and they got one.

“I think the time for her — and the prosecution — to act is now because the verdict was tainted by the two jurors who didn’t acknowledge their past,” Levine said. “They have based her appeal off of that.”

In addition, Maxwell’s family want her moved to a British prison where conditions are significantly better.

Levine thinks if Maxwell sings, she’ll target the four women who were given immunity by the feds in connection with Epstein’s 2008 underage sex plea deal. Maxwell mysteriously wasn’t named but is the fifth woman Epstein’s lawyers asked for immunity.

But will she name the great and good who defiled the teens with help from Epstein and Maxwell?

“She tried to play the immunity card at her trial … but the public wouldn’t be satisfied with her naming the bit players instead of the men who sexually abused these girls,” Levine said. “We want the names of these wealthy and powerful men.”

“In the end, it’s down to Ghislaine. It rests with her. Epstein is dead, Jean-Luc Brunel (the Paris modeling agent who allegedly supplied girls to the financier) is dead.

“The $1 million question is will she attempt to name these men of high exposure, like Prince Andrew who is not a U.S. citizen … that is still a card she could play. But public sentiment won’t allow her to just walk away.”

Levine added: “Her goose is cooked.”

Maxwell may also have another worry. Epstein’s “suicide” is not the final word on his death, same with Brunel.

“There’s some who might say if Ghislaine turns rat she’s opening herself up to getting a ‘hit’ put out on her,” Levine said.

“But every minute she spends behind bars there’s the risk of being killed by a crazed inmate. So she’s damned either way.”

bhunter@postmedia.com

@HunterTOSun