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 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 nearly three-hour hearing ahead of Maxwell’s Nov. 29 trial on six charges related to sex trafficking. Maxwell faces two separate 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 and cannot be included in the trial, and the boundaries litigated in the hearing can be revisited during the trial if deemed appropriate.

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, Jeffrey 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 Epstein had struck with federal prosecutors in South Florida more than a decade earlier, which 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 alleged victims, who said they had been denied justice through Epstein’s prior lenient sentence and the lack of transparency by federal prosecutors about the deal 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.

“[T]he law is clear that for purposes of the jury the government is not on trial,” Nathan said.

Nathan also denied Maxwell’s bid to introduce the non-prosecution agreement 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 and Nathan had previously denied Maxwell’s argument that this agreement shielded her from the charges she faces.

Nathan agreed to Maxwell’s request to bar emails in which Maxwell arranged what Maxwell’s team described as dates for other men with women above the age of consent, despite the government’s contention that the messages were “based on physical descriptions and not in sort of a matchmaking capacity.”

And Nathan requested more information about testimony the government planned to include from the third of the four alleged victims in the indictment, who had been above the age of consent in the United Kingdom at the time of the offenses charged. The government’s justification for including testimony from the alleged victim is due by the end of the week, with Maxwell’s response due the following.

On Tuesday, Nathan will set the date for a hearing on Maxwell’s motions to exclude expert testimony during the trial. Jury selection is scheduled the week before Thanksgiving.