No deal: Maxwell never sought plea bargain on charges she groomed Epstein’s victims
Ever since Ghislaine Maxwell’s July 2020 arrest in a tiny New Hampshire town, there has been rampant speculation about whether Maxwell, the former girlfriend and alleged procurer for disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, would cut a deal with federal prosecutors and spill details on Epstein’s and Maxwell’s high-powered friends, many of whom are alleged to have been party to Epstein’s sexual abuse of girls, in exchange for leniency.
But it turns out there has never been talk of a deal.
“I have not committed any crime,” Maxwell, 59, said Monday when asked to confirm whether she had sought a deal to plead guilty.
That was after federal prosecutors and Maxwell’s attorney, Bobbi Sternheim, confirmed in the Monday hearing that neither side had sought to negotiate a plea bargain. The disclosure came near the end of the hearing ahead of Maxwell’s Nov. 29 trial on six charges related to sex trafficking. Maxwell faces two charges of perjury that will be heard after the sex-trafficking trial has concluded.
The hearing Monday was mostly concerned with establishing the ground rules for what can be included in the trial.
Federal prosecutors can refer to Ghislaine Maxwell’s accusers as “victims” at the trial, for example, over the objection of Maxwell’s team. And those accusers can be referred to by pseudonyms, per the preference of federal prosecutors and over the objection of Maxwell’s team.
Maxwell is accused by federal prosecutors of grooming four girls for the abuse of her one-time boyfriend, Epstein, between 1994 and 2004, and participating in the abuse of one of the girls herself.
She was arrested one year after federal prosecutors in New York had arrested Epstein on fresh sex charges following scrutiny of an extraordinarily lenient plea deal that Epstein had struck with federal prosecutors in South Florida more than a decade earlier. The deal had been the subject of the Miami Herald’s Perversion of Justice series.
Epstein was found dead in a Manhattan prison cell one month after his arrest.
The Herald’s reporting gave voice to several of Epstein’s accusers, who said they had been denied justice by Epstein’s prior lenient sentence and the lack of transparency by federal prosecutors about the deal that they had struck with Epstein. With their hopes of judicial closure stymied by Epstein’s death, Maxwell’s trial offers another opportunity
for them to have their day in court.
U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan denied Maxwell’s request to discuss the Miami Herald’s coverage of Epstein and public comments made by former Attorney General William Barr and others after publication, which her team had suggested it would use to question the government’s motives in charging Maxwell.
Nathan also denied Maxwell’s bid to introduce the non-prosecution agreement that federal prosecutors in South Florida struck with Epstein in 2008 to shield him and his co-conspirators from further charges. Maxwell was not named in the agreement.