Document drop: What secrets does Ghislaine Maxwell have now?
Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, is now sitting in a federal jail in New York awaiting trial on sex trafficking & perjury charges related to Epstein’s sex trafficking ring. Since her arrest in July 2019, Maxwell’s legal team has repeatedly tried to get Maxwell released on bail, and made several attempts to get the charges against her dropped entirely.
Now, on Wednesday, January 27th, 2021 a cohort of new documents were released overnight detailing information relevant to the case against Ghislaine Maxwell. However, a lot of information in the documents was redacted, including many portions of Maxwell’s own deposition.
U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska ruled that although these documents were being released, Ghislaine Maxwell did in fact have a right to keep her consensual sexual experiences with adult private, including those with Jeffrey Epstein.
New evidence
Navigating through the blacked out portions of the documents revealed some information though. An unidentified witness testified he saw Ghislaine Maxwell command several underage girls to kiss, touch each other sexually, and dance with one another while Jeffrey Epstein watched on.
There was also information pertaining to another individual who allegedly testified that called him on several occasions for the purposes of producing young girls that Maxwell could then hand over to Epstein for sexual purposes. If proven to be true, this information could be significant for the case against Maxwell because she faces criminal perjury charges related to her testimony provided in 2016 where she denied such allegations.
That is not all that was included in the documents. Testimony from employees of Jeffrey Epstein, Juan Alessi & Rinaldo Rizzo, were also released. Both men worked in Epstein’s domestic homes at some point or another. Details of the excerpts of their testimonies is not known at this time.
Epstein connections
Back in 2020, an appeals court ruling allowed for the unsealing of documents from Maxwell’s 2016 deposition that contained the names of several incredibly wealthy & powerful men that were connected to Jeffrey Epstein.
Former president Bill Clinton was among the names, and specific allegations were made against Prince Andrew & Alan Derschowitz. U.S District Judge Loretta Preska is now redacting all the names of these men previously made public.
A further development occurred in Ghislaine Maxwell’s case this week as well. On Monday Maxwell’s legal team appeared before an entirely different federal judge and filed twelve motions seeking to dismiss the criminal charges against Ghislaine Maxwell. While several of these motions remain sealed at this time, not all of them are.
Motions
One motion argued the sex trafficking charges against Ghislaine Maxwell should be dropped now. Maxwell’s legal team states that the names of the three alleged victims were not mentioned, nor were any specific dates pertaining to the alleged misconduct. The information provided just refers to incidents that occurred between 1994 & 1997.
One of the other motions attests that Ghislaine Maxwell’s indictment should be discarded because of the jury which delivered it. Maxwell’s legal team makes the case that the grand jury in White Plains, New York that indicted Ghislaine Maxwell is far less Black & Hispanic than the jury she will inevitably face when she is tried in Manhattan.
One of the motions that does remain sealed pertains to the fact that Ghislaine Maxwell is currently protected by a non-prosecution agreement which Jeffrey Epstein negotiated with federal prosecutors in Florida during his 2007 trial.
No more protection
The contents of this deal protected Epstein himself, and any of his potential co-conspirators that could be named in the future, from being charged again for the sex crimes Epstein was investigated for in 2007. This includes Ghislaine Maxwell.
Federal prosecutors in New York have previously argued that this non-prosecution agreement does not pertain to the current case against Ghislaine Maxwell. According to these prosecutors, the sex trafficking allegations against Ghislaine Maxwell supposedly took place before the time period covered by Epstein’s non-prosecution agreement.
Based on this, they say this disqualifies Maxwell from any protection the agreement provides. It remains to be seen how the judge will rule on these twelve new motions for dismissal. However, all previous attempts by Maxwell’s legal team to get her out of prison and have the charges against her thrown out have now failed.
