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‘Firm Trial Date’ Is Set For Jeffrey Epstein's Pal, Ghislaine Maxwell, In November
The trial for British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who is facing a series of charges including sex trafficking related to Jeffrey Epstein, is scheduled to begin on Nov. 29.
A “firm trial date” has been set for Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite accused of helping wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually traffic underage girls.
District Judge Alison J. Nathan set Maxwell’s trial date for Nov. 29, 2021 in a letter filed Friday in federal court and obtained by Oxygen.com.
“The Clerk’s Office has now confirmed that a jury trial in this case has been scheduled to commence on November 29, 2021,” Nathan wrote. “This is a firm trial date.”
The trial had been tentatively scheduled to begin on that same date before Nathan finalized the plans last week.
According to Nathan, jury selection will be completed in the weeks leading up to the trial and a pre-trial conference for prosecutors and defense attorneys has been scheduled for Nov. 1.
The 59-year-old has pleaded not guilty to the eight counts against her, including sex trafficking.
Prosecutors have alleged in an indictment that the socialite helped Epstein “recruit, groom and ultimately abuse” girls as young as 14 years old.
Authorities allege Maxwell also encouraged the young girls to travel to Epstein’s homes even though she “knew” and intended that it would “result in their grooming for and subjection to sexual abuse,” according to the indictment.
Maxwell is currently being held without bail in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn while she awaits her impending trial.
Her attorneys have requested her release on bail on five separate occasions, but the motions have always been denied, according to The New York Post.
Earlier this month, Nathan rejected Maxwell’s latest bid to have the sex trafficking charges against her thrown out after her attorneys compared her case to that of Bill Cosby’s.
Her attorneys had argued that she should have been protected against the charges because of a non-prosecution agreement Epstein had signed with federal prosecutors in Florida in 2008, Reuters reported.
She compared the agreement to one Cosby had signed in 2005 that said prosecutors would not charge him for allegedly drugging and assaulting Andrea Constand in exchange for his testimony in a civil trial.
Cosby was freed earlier this year after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that the agreement should have prevented him from ever being criminally charged in connection with the allegations.
In Maxwell’s case, however, Nathan ruled that she would not be bound by that decision because, unlike Cosby’s case, Maxwell had not been the one to make the agreement with prosecutors, according to the Reuters.
Jeffrey Epstein died in his federal jail cell in August of 2019 while awaiting trial on his own charges.
Maxwell’s alleged role in the operation, and her connection to Epstein himself, is also the focus of the Peacock docuseries “Epstein’s Shadow: Ghislaine Maxwell,” now streaming.
