Prosecutors are pushing for Ghislaine Maxwell to be sentenced to 30 to 55 years in prison for her role in sex trafficking teenage girls who were sexually abused by deceased millionaire Jeffrey Epstein, who was once her boyfriend.
Prosecutors made their written request to Judge Allison J. Nathan on Wednesday night. Maxwell is set to be sentenced on Tuesday in a federal court in Manhattan.
The British socialite was found guilty by a jury in December 2021 on five of six counts of sex trafficking charges following a month-long trial. Four women testified during the trial that Maxwell had even participated in the abuse in addition to facilitating Epstein’s crimes, CNN reported.
“As part of a disturbing agreement with Jeffrey Epstein, Maxwell identified, groomed, and abused multiple victims, while she enjoyed a life of extraordinary luxury and privilege,” the prosecution team wrote in their request, per the Associated Press (AP). “In her wake, Maxwell left her victims permanently scarred with emotional and psychological injuries.”
Maxwell’s lawyers requested last week that she be sentenced to around five years in prison, arguing that she should not be targeted for Epstein’s crimes, as he was the ringleader who “orchestrated the crimes for his personal gratification,” the AP reported. The defense attorney’s recommendation is well under the 20-year sentence that the court’s probation department recommended, the New York Times noted.
The defense lawyer also reasoned that after Epstein’s 2019 suicide in prison, Maxwell was targeted by prosecutors to “‘repair the tarnished reputations’ of the Justice Department and the Bureau of Prisons, in whose custody the disgraced financier died,” per the Times. The newspaper also reported that the defense asked the judge to consider placing blame on Maxwell’s father, Robert, saying he was “cruel and intimidating.”
Prosecutors countered those pleas for leniency in their written request, saying Maxwell’s conduct was “monstrous” and that she played an “instrumental role in the horrific sexual abuse of multiple young teenage girls” over a span of ten years (1994 to 2004) at properties owned by Epstein, the AP reported.
As Breitbart News reported on June 16, the defense team also alleged that a cellmate of Maxwell claimed she was “offered money” to strangle and kill the 60-year-old socialite while she was sleeping. Government prosecutors asked the judge to dismiss a request for a softer sentence that the defense team made in light of the cellmate’s claims.
Per Breitbart News, while the 60-year-old was awaiting trial:
Maxwell had been denied bail numerous times, failing to convince a judge to let her leave her New York City jail cell in exchange for renouncing both her British and French citizenships as part of an effort to “eliminate any opportunity for her to seek refuge in those countries.”
U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan granted the wish of prosecutors to reject Maxwell’s request, stating in a court filing: “[T]he Court concludes that none of the Defendant’s new arguments and proposals disturb its conclusion that the Defendant poses a risk of flight and that there are no combination of conditions that can reasonably assure her appearance.”
The case is United States v. Maxwell, No. 1:20-cr-330 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
You can follow Ethan Letkeman on Twitter at @EthanLetkeman.
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