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Epstein case: Ghislaine Maxwell shoots red balls on justice

Epstein’s case continues to pour out ink. Last episode of this legal saga as dark as it is complex: the defenders of Ghislaine Maxwell claim that their client would only be a target by default of prosecutors. The latter, taken aback by the suicide in prison of the financier, would have changed their tune by targeting the ex-companion of Epstein, now incarcerated and accused of trafficking in minors.

“The authorities’ sudden zeal to prosecute Ms. Maxwell for her alleged dealings with Epstein in the 1990s – acts for which Epstein was never prosecuted – is deeply disturbing,” the lawyers explain in court documents unearthed by our colleagues of The Independent, Friday February 5, 2021. A relentlessness which would prove that justice is looking for a scapegoat to “feed the media frenzy” triggered by the death of Jeffrey Epstein in 2019.

A request for release refused

Ghislaine Maxwell is charged with six counts, including trafficking in minors, incitement to prostitution, over a period from 1994 to 1997, and charged with lying under oath in 2016 in civil proceedings . If found guilty of all charges, the 58-year-old woman would face life imprisonment. She is said to have recruited teenage girls in several cities around the world for Jeffrey Epstein to have sex with the businessman. According to the indictment, she was present during several of these reports and even participated regularly.

The former socialite, detained in a Brooklyn prison, had been refused release on bail by a New York court on December 29, 2020. The federal judge in Manhattan had considered that the accused, after a long run months, continued to present a risk of flight.

Prescribed facts?

The documents unveiled by the British newspaper also reveal the lawyers’ strategy to reduce the charges against their client. Two requests were thus filed in order to dismiss all the charges in the criminal aspect of the case. In particular, lawyers argue that charges of conspiracy to entice minors to travel to engage in unlawful sexual acts should be dropped, as the alleged crimes are time barred.

The incriminated facts predate those which led to Jeffrey Epstein being indicted in July 2019, which dated back to the early 2000s. The three alleged victims cited in the indictment, and whose identity no. has not yet been revealed, were all minors at the time of the alleged facts, the youngest only 14 years old. Two of them were allegedly sexually assaulted by Jeffrey Epstein. Arrested in July 2019, the latter hanged himself in his cell in early August. Ghislaine Maxwell says she has not had contact with him for at least ten years.


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