At U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Tuesday afternoon, two sketch artists sat at the front of the jury assembly room to capture Ghislaine Maxwell as she was projected onto a screen. It was her much-awaited arraignment on charges of facilitating Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of minors as well as perjury, but the coronavirus pandemic meant that Maxwell entered her plea—not guilty of all allegations, which she denies—via video conference. The federal judge Alison Nathan denied her bail, and Maxwell will be detained until her trial, which Nathan set for July 12, 2021. Prosecutors said they expect the trial to last two to three weeks.
In the 50-capacity room—the largest in the courthouse, with socially distanced seats due to the pandemic—reporters looked on as Maxwell’s lawyer Mark Cohen and federal prosecutors debated her flight risk. There was also an overflow pressroom, a swarm of news cameras outside the courthouse, and a phone line to listen to the audio—originally meant for 500 people but then extended to 1,000.
Maxwell, who’s being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, appeared to be in a conference room, and showed little emotion over the course of the two-plus hour hearing. On occasion she sipped from a Styrofoam cup. The prosecution’s successful argument against granting her bail turned largely on leveraging her wealth and social status against her, citing her “history of extensive international travel.” She has no income, prosecutors said, but seemingly inexhaustible resources. One concern was that she could go to France, which issued one of her three passports, and avoid extradition. “She has the ability and willingness to live off the grid indefinitely,” a prosecutor said.
Over the course of the argument, a few distinctly Maxwellian details of her life on the run over the past year were brought up. She allegedly pretended to be a journalist named Jen Marshall when, in November, she purchased the New Hampshire mansion where she was arrested a few weeks ago. When Maxwell was apprehended, her cell phone was wrapped in tin foil, and when she saw the agents, she went to another room in the house. These efforts to evade detection, “albeit [made] foolishly and not well-executed,” were used as evidence that she would try again if released. Maxwell proposed that her detention take place in a luxury Manhattan hotel.
Annie Farmer, one of Maxwell’s accusers, said during the hearing that “she is a sexual predator who groomed and abused me and countless other children,” adding that “she has never shown any remorse for her heinous crimes.”
Taken together, the extent of Maxwell’s record and the allegations against her led Nathan to conclude that she posed a significant flight risk.
In a statement read by a prosecutor, another accuser, this one anonymous, said, “Without Ghislaine, Jeffrey could not do what he did.” She said that she’d received threatening phone calls during a previous civil proceeding in which she was going to testify against Maxwell. “I have great fear that Ghislaine Maxwell will flee,” she said, adding that, “If she is out, I need to be protected.”
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