... but defence tears into ‘greedy’ accusers

ERRONEOUS memories, gold-digging accusers and greedy lawyers have conspired to cast innocent Ghislaine Maxwell as a ‘Cruella de Vil’, her lawyer said last night as she urged a New York jury to acquit her client.

Laura Menninger said Maxwell had been ‘wrongfully accused of crimes she did not commit’ as the defence case closed.

The attorney lashed out at the four accusers, saying they had ‘suddenly remembered Ghislaine was the culprit’, having previously only complained about Jeffrey Epstein.

All the women received payouts totalling millions of dollars from the Epstein victims fund after his death in 2019, the court has heard.

‘These accusers had stories to tell about Jeffrey Epstein and years later they inserted Ghislaine Maxwell into their narrative,’ she said. ‘The money brought the accusers to the FBI with their personal injury lawyers sitting next to them.

‘The lawyers manipulated their stories. You don’t need a lawyer to go talk to the FBI – unless you want to get money.’

Miss Menninger said her client had been made to look like ‘Cruella de Vil and the Devil Wears Prada all wrapped up into one’. She poured scorn on the prosecution case that Maxwell acted as Epstein’s madam in return for living the high life, including $30million deposited into her bank accounts over the years.

Alluding to Epstein’s connections with high-profile figures, she pointed to a photo of the couple at a shooting party and said: ‘Maybe it was Jeffrey who needed Ghislaine, not the other way round.’

The court has heard that Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and Maxwell’s friend Prince Andrew all flew on Epstein’s fleet of private jets, which including one plane nicknamed the Lolita Express.

In her two-hour statement, Miss Menninger

highlighted dozens of alleged inconsistencies by the accusers and suggested two had suffered from ‘post event suggestion’, adding new and false information years later.

She added that prosecutors had failed to produce numerous staff, family members and others to back up the claims.

Prosecutor Maurene Comey replied that the accusers had not gone through the ‘excruciating and humiliating hell’ of testifying to make money as they already had payouts from the Epstein victims fund.

She added: ‘They did it for justice, in the hope the defendant would be held accountable for shattering their lives.’