The U.S. government has urged an appeals court to uphold the conviction and 20-year prison sentence of Ghislaine Maxwell, the onetime girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, who was found guilty of helping the disgraced late billionaire financier sexually abuse teenage girls and women.
In a filing with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan on Thursday, federal prosecutors said none of Maxwell’s legal arguments about the fairness of her trial held merit.
“The government’s evidence at trial established that over the course of a decade, Maxwell facilitated and participated in the sexual abuse of multiple young girls,” prosecutors said.
Maxwell, a 61-year-old British socialite who is also the daughter of late media mogul Robert Maxwell, is being held behind bars at a low-security federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida. She is slated to be released from prison in 2037.
She was convicted in late 2021 for luring mostly vulnerable and financially desperate minors to be sexually abused by Epstein, a wealthy financier with ties to elite figures in the British royal family and the U.S. business and political spheres.
A Manhattan jury convicted Maxwell on five charges for recruiting and grooming four girls for Epstein to abuse between 1994 and 2004.
Epstein was facing sex trafficking charges when he died in a Manhattan jail in 2019. A medical examiner in New York City ruled his death a suicide by hanging. Epstein had pleaded guilty to sex crimes in 2008 for soliciting a minor for prostitution in Florida.
Maxwell’s attorneys filed a notice of appeal in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on July 7, 2022, shortly after she was sentenced to 20 years in prison on June 28, 2022. Defense attorney Bobbi Sternheim said Epstein left Maxwell “holding the whole bag.”
“We all know that the person who should have been sentenced today escaped accountability, avoided his victims, avoided absorbing their pain and receiving the punishment he truly deserved,” she said.
In her appeal, she argued through her lawyers that prosecutors had made her a scapegoat after Epstein’s death and “public outrage” demanded that someone else absorb the blame.
Her lawyers also previously offered several arguments for dismissing the case or granting a new trial after one of the jurors, Scotty David—also known as Juror 50—failed to disclose he had suffered sexual abuse as a child on a pre-trial questionnaire.
In response to the arguments about David, federal prosecutors said: “Judge Nathan conducted a thorough inquiry and determined that Juror 50’s inadvertent errors on the jury questionnaire did not undermine Maxwell’s right to a fair trial,” Daily Mail reported.
Longtime Associate
Maxwell previously lived for years with Epstein and was his frequent travel companion on trips around the world. Her accusers have said she and Epstein at first made them feel welcome in their orbit before Epstein began demanding sexualized massages.
Evidence has shown that Epstein had transferred over $30 million to Maxwell during and after a stretch of years from 1994 to 2004, when they were most closely connected, the Associated Press reported.
Her trial featured testimony from some women who were victimized when they were children, as well as the testimony of pilots who dropped the names of famous men who flew on Epstein’s private jets.
Some high-ranking figures who were friendly with Epstein have seen their reputations tarred or ruined, among them Britain’s Prince Andrew and former JPMorgan Chase executive and Barclays chief executive Jes Staley.
JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank, which both had Epstein as a client, are paying a combined $365 million to Epstein’s accusers over their work for him. The U.S. Virgin Islands, where Epstein had a home, is also suing JPMorgan.
Reuters contributed to this report.
