Ghislaine Maxwell (shown), the British socialite accused of recruiting and grooming girls to become sex slaves for deceased Wall Street financier and sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, pleaded not guilty to the crimes yesterday.
As well, a federal judge denied bail and will keep Maxwell locked up until trial because she might flee the country.
Maxwell faces six charges in connection with Epstein’s globe-spanning sex-trafficking operation.
The Charges
Maxwell, 58, denied the accusations concerning the four counts directly related to the sex-trafficking and the two counts of perjury that stem from her testimony in a civil lawsuit in 2016 related to the sex-trafficking operation.
As expected, Judge Ailson Nathan of the Federal District Court in Manhattan agreed with prosecutors, who argued that Maxwell must not be released because of her fabulous wealth, citizenship in France, and incentive to flee.
The judge said, “Ms. Maxwell had demonstrated a sophisticated ability to hide herself and obscure her financial resources,” the New York Times reported on the virtual bail hearing. Maxwell, the judge said, “poses a substantial actual risk of flight.”
Maxwell, the Times reported, appeared on video and did not react when the judge read her ruling: “She wiped her eyes at some points, but it was not clear if she was crying. Near the end of the hearing, she dropped her head repeatedly as it became apparent that she would not be granted bail.”
Nathan heard from two women who claimed to be Maxwell’s victims, the Times reported:
One of the women, Annie Farmer, called Ms. Maxwell “a sexual predator who groomed and abused me and countless other children and young women.” …
A prosecutor, Alison Moe, read aloud the statement from the other woman, who chose to be referred to only as Jane Doe. In her statement, she said, “Without Ghislaine, Jeffrey could not have done what he did.”
After Maxwell’s arrest, one of Epstein’s victims told Fox News that Maxwell raped her 20 or 30 times, and with Epstein, forced her to have an abortion at 16 before dumping and threatening her and her family.
New Details
Though the judge denied bail because Maxwell is a French citizen and France does not extradite citizens to foreign countries to face criminal charges, the Times reported, prosecutors added new details that suggest Maxwell lied about the posh estate at which the FBI arrested her.
“The real estate agent who sold it told the F.B.I. that the property had been purchased and viewed by a couple, including a woman who identified herself as Jen Marshall and said she was a journalist in need of privacy,” the Times reported.
In fact, federal prosecutor Alison Moe told the judge, the real estate agent saw Maxwell’s photo in the news, the Times reported, and recognized her as “Jen Marshall.”
And “that contradicted information provided by Ms. Maxwell to court officials after her arrest that she did not know who bought the property and only knew that it was owned by a corporation,” Moe told the judge.
Amazingly, the prosecutor said “Maxwell also told court officials that she had no income,” the Times reported:
She questioned that assertion, saying it was unlikely that Ms. Maxwell could live her lifestyle without any money coming in from a possible inheritance or trust accounts.
“It just doesn’t make sense,” Ms. Moe said.
The prosecutors’ detention memoranda say Maxwell has had as much as $20 million in more than a dozen bank accounts in the last four years.
Maxwell is the daughter of late British tycoon and Israeli spy Robert Maxwell.
Suicide Risk?
As The New American reported yesterday, officials at the Metropolitan Detention Center are watching Maxwell closely to ensure she doesn’t kill herself, or be murdered, news reports suggest.
The concerns arise from Epstein’s death at the Metropolitan Correctional Center a month after the feds collared him on sex-trafficking charges last year.
Though a coroner concluded that the convicted sex criminal died by his own hand, skeptics think he was murdered to keep him quiet about the rich, powerful men to whom he trafficked his sex slaves.
Jail officials found Epstein hanged by a bedsheet in his cell a day after his cellmate was removed, and his guards did not check his cell in the hours before he died.
Image of Ghislaine Maxwell: Screenshot of a YouTube video by Sky News
