Socialite Maxwell rests her case as the jury prepares to go out in NYC

Ghislaine Maxwell declined to give evidence at her sex trafficking trial as the defence rested their case.

On Friday Maxwell was asked to stand by the judge, who instructed her that she had the right to testify but also the right not to.

Maxwell said: “Your honour, the government has not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt so there is no reason for me to testify.”

Yesterday she returned to court in New York for a rare weekend hearing where lawyers made arguments about how the judge should instruct the jury.

The Judge scheduled the hearing in a bid to keep the trial on track for jurors to consider their verdicts early this week.

Jurors will return to court tomorrow to hear closing arguments before they begin their deliberations.

Earlier, defence lawyers called another of Jeffrey Epstein’s ex-girlfriends to give evidence.

Eva Andersson-dubin, 60, a former Miss Sweden and New York City doctor, told the jury that she trusted the financier with her young daughters and denied taking part in a group sexual encounter with a key accuser.

She said she dated Epstein on and off from 1983 to the early 1990s, before he dated Maxwell. She denied ever seeing inappropriate conduct between Epstein and teenage girls.

Socialite Maxwell, 59, has pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking charges stemming from her interactions with four teenage girls from 1994 to 2004.

During that time, Maxwell was romantically involved with and then later worked for businessman Epstein, who took his own life in a federal jail in August 2019 while awaiting his own sex trafficking trial.