Ghislaine Maxwell is hoping a judge will drop the federal sex trafficking charges against her thanks to Jeffrey Epstein’s 2007 plea deal, which was supposed to protect himself and his close contacts from sex-trafficking charges.
Maxwell is accused of procuring underage girls for Epstein between 1994 and 1997, as well as abusing some of the women herself. In 2007, Epstein took the plea deal “in exchange for pleading guilty in 2008 to state prostitution charges in Florida and registering as a sex offender,” the New York Post reported. That deal was also meant to protect the people around him, though as the Post noted it did not name Maxwell specifically. Still, Maxwell’s attorneys are trying to use that plea agreement to get the charges dropped against her.
Epstein also planned to refer to the 2007 sweetheart deal when dealing with the federal charges brought against him in 2019. Epstein hanged himself on August 10, 2019.
For Maxwell, she is also claiming there weren’t “enough black and Hispanic jurors” used during her indictment, the Post reported.
“The arguments are among a dozen motions Maxwell’s lawyers filed Monday seeking to dismiss — or, at the very least, reduce — the federal charges she faces,” the outlet added.
Maxwell’s attorneys claimed that since a grand jury from White Plains was used to indict the British socialite, instead of one from New York City, the grand jury was unfair.
“In doing so, the government procured Ms. Maxwell’s indictment using a grand jury pool that excluded residents of the community in which Ms. Maxwell allegedly committed the offenses with which she is charged, and in which she will be tried, in favor of a grand jury drawn from a community in which Black and Hispanic residents are significantly underrepresented by comparison,” Maxwell’s attorneys wrote in a court filing.
This is simply the latest of many filings from Maxwell’s attorneys. Last month, Maxwell’s motion for bail was denied once again, this time receiving a sharp rebuke from U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan for misleading the court about her marital status and wealth.
When Maxwell was arrested in July on charges of procuring underage girls for Epstein, she refused to name her husband and claimed she was divorcing him.
“The defendant now argues that her newly revealed relationship with her spouse signals her deep affective ties in the country, but at the time she was arrested, she was not living with him and claimed to be getting divorced,” Nathan wrote when denying Maxwell’s $28.5 million bail package.
Her attorneys also argued in December that Maxwell was being mistreated in prison, leading to her losing weight and her hair. A staff attorney for the prison said her weight has remained stable while in confinement.
Her attorneys have also tried to keep secret a “damaging deposition” from 2016.
“Maxwell, 58, has said negative publicity from the disclosure of ‘intimate, sensitive, and personal’ information from her deposition would violate her right against self-incrimination, and imperil a fair trial because jurors might hold it against her,” Reuters reported at the time.