The former associate and girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, is under fire from nearly three million pages of evidence in the sex trafficking case in which she allegedly groomed underage girls for the New York financier to abuse. What exactly did this new evidence further reveal?
According to Newsweek, US attorney Audrey Strauss wrote a letter to the court that read, “As the Court is aware, the Government has produced to the defendant more than 2.7 million pages of discovery pursuant to the Government’s various discovery obligations.” This evidence only emerged as the prosecution objected to a subpoena which was submitted by Maxwell’s lawyers to the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner (BSF), which is also the law firm that represents Prince Andrew’s accuser Virginia Giuffre as well as a number of other Epstein victims.
The original indictment against Maxwell was related to alleged crimes that were committed during the 1990s, but new information indicates that abuse and sex trafficking of, in one particular case a 14 year old girl reffered to as ‘Minor Victim-4’ in court, while being paid for it, actually continued until as recently as 2004. In July 2020, Maxwell was then arrested nearly a year after Epstein was charged and detained himself. About a month after his arrest however, he was found unresponsive in his jail cell and declared dead by suicide.
The evidence involved in the case obviously consists of a huge amount of personal information regarding all parties involved, as to be expected, and Strauss requested in a court filing that any evidence that is released be kept confidential to protect the Epstein victims. “To the extent the defendant has obtained or will obtain sensitive information about victims or witnesses, it should be treated as ‘confidential’ under the protective order much like other such information in this case.”
In November of 2020, Maxwell’s lawyer had complained that she was not given enough time to prepare her case while in prison, Newsweek reports on the letter submitted to court that said “given the voluminous discovery in this case, the most recent production alone being 1.2 million documents, the time accorded Ms. Maxwell remains inadequate for her to review and prepare the defense of her life.” Her lawyers bid for Maxwell to be granted bail in order to better prepare, and now those 1.2 million pages of evidence against her have now increased to 2.7 million. She was also the first New York City inmate to get an in-prison visit from a lawyer since the global pandemic began, reports say.
Fast forward to March 2021, a new indictment was filed which claims that Maxwell was “discussing sexual topics, undressing in front of the victim, being present when a minor victim was undressed, and/or being present for sex acts involving the minor victim and Epstein.” Until this new evidence has been released, she had denied previous charges and is now expected to enter a plea later this year. According to The Independent, she is awaiting trial in a New York prison.
Anyone who followed the Epstein case closely or watched the Netflix documentary about the disgraced financier who has been allegedly operating a tight-knit sex trafficking ring across the world to some of the most high profile individuals—including himself—knows that his partner Ghislaine Maxwell has been nowhere to be found for years.
Since Epstein’s New York trial and mysterious ‘suicide’ while in prison awaiting the second day of the hearing on 10 August 2019, the world has been searching for his number one co-conspirator Maxwell.
Yesterday, 14 July, Maxwell faced her first hearing in New York, where she is looking at up to 34 years in prison if convicted. During the hearing, conducted over video conferencing, Maxwell was denied bail which her lawyers set at $5 million (£4 million) against her UK property while the alleged conspirator pleaded not guilty.
The federal prosecutors claimed that Maxwell is in very high “flight” risk and should remain in custody and under high-security watch—learning their lessons from the death of Epstein as he awaited his second day of trial.
When she was arrested on 2 July by FBI agents who visited her home, the agents claim they saw Maxwell from the window refuse to come downstairs and begin to flee to another room in the house. Adding that “Agents were ultimately forced to breach the door in order to enter the house to arrest the defendant.”
In response to the judge’s denial of bail for Maxwell, her lawyers claimed that she will be in “high risk of conducting the virus” if she is to await her trial in prison.
Maxwell’s trial will begin in 2021, and she is detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Ghislaine Maxwell was found and arrested on 2 July 2020, in Bradford, New Hampshire, US, on charges that she worked closely with Epstein to sexually abuse and traffic minor girls and women. When she was found, she was living at a secluded, million-dollar luxury home with 156 acres of rural mountainside property, as reported by federal prosecutors.
Maxwell faces charges on several different accounts, four of which are addressing her close relationship with Epstein between the years of 1994 to 1997, during which time she was Epstein’s closest associate and partner. Together, they groomed and sexually abused girls who they knew were minors. According to the indictment against Maxwell, she “assisted, facilitated, and contributed to Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of minor girls by, among other things, helping Epstein to recruit, groom and ultimately abuse victims known to Maxwell and Epstein to be under the age of 18.”
On Tuesday 21 July, President Trump returned to the White House podium to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic but the conversation took an unusual detour when he offered warm words for Ghislaine Maxwell. After a journalist asked Trump whether he expected Maxwell to go public with the names of powerful men who have been accused in lawsuits of taking part in the sex-trafficking ring that Epstein allegedly ran, the US president said: “I don’t know. I haven’t really been following it too much. I just wish her well, frankly.”
“I’ve met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach, and I guess they lived in Palm Beach,” Trump continued, referring to the Florida town where his Mar-a-Lago resort is and where Mr. Epstein had a home. “But I wish her well, whatever it is.”
