The brother of a British socialite charged with helping convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein exploit underage girls has said that her prosecution is “the most overhyped trial of the century,” designed to break a woman targeted by US authorities desperate to blame someone for the late financier’s crimes.
Ghislaine Maxwell continues to have the backing of her family, and a family member would be in court at all times to show support, Ian Maxwell said in an interview ahead of the trial, which is set to begin tomorrow in the US District Court in Manhattan, New York.
This is “the most overhyped trial of the century without a doubt,” Ian Maxwell told reporters. “This is designed to break her; I can’t see any other way to read it. And she will not be broken because she believes completely in her innocence and she is going to give the best account she can.”
Photo: AP
Prosecutors accuse Ghislaine Maxwell, 59, of grooming girls as young as 14 years to have sex with Epstein and lying about her knowledge of his crimes when she testified in an earlier case.
She has been in custody for almost 17 months, after Judge Alison Nathan has repeatedly denied requests for bail.
Prosecutors at a news conference in July last year announced the charges against Ghislaine Maxwell, saying that she had lured young girls into a trap that she and Epstein had set for them.
“Miss Maxwell chose to blatantly disregard the law and her responsibility as an adult, using whatever means she had at her disposal to lure vulnerable youth into behavior they should never have been exposed to, creating the potential for lasting harm,” FBI Assistant Director William Sweeney said at the time.
However, Ian Maxwell said that his sister has been blamed by US authorities that are intent on holding someone responsible for Epstein’s crimes.
Epstein killed himself in jail in 2019 before he could face trial.
“This is not quite a put-up job, but nonetheless has been cobbled together so that Ghislaine is made to face the charges that Epstein never faced,” Ian Maxwell said.
Ghislaine Maxwell is the youngest of the late media mogul Robert Maxwell’s nine children. The tycoon was once one of the richest men in the UK, but that wealth evaporated after he drowned in 1991 and investors discovered that he had siphoned hundreds of millions of pounds from employee pension funds to prop up his empire.
His children supported each other after Robert Maxwell died, and Ian and his brother were charged with financial crimes related to their father’s actions. Both were acquitted.
Now they are rallying around their sister, who dated Epstein and was his frequent companion on trips around the world.
The family continues to demand that Ghislaine Maxwell be released on bail, arguing that the conditions of her detention are tantamount to torture and prevent her from assisting her defense attorneys.
The six remaining siblings this week asked the UN to investigate Ghislaine Maxwell’s “inhumane” treatment.
Ian Maxwell said his sister is in “effective isolation” at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, where she is held in a 1.8m by 2.7m cell that has no natural light, and is equipped with a toilet and a concrete bed.
She is unable to sleep because she is watched around the clock by four guards and 10 cameras due to unwarranted concerns that she is at suicide risk, he said.
Earlier this month, a judge again refused to let her trade her jail cell for home detention, citing the serious nature of the charges and her risk of flight.
“The denial of bail is wholly inappropriate,” Ian Maxwell said. “Some very famous, infamous people were granted bail as most recently the killer of George Floyd, a murderer. John Gotti, another murderer, a mobster. Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Bernie Madoff. These are all men, of course, who got bail. Ghislaine is a woman who somehow doesn’t get bail.”
“The authorities are feeling under pressure because they lost [Epstein] and they’re feeling under the public’s pressure, and that combination of pressure is keeping Ghislaine inside,” Ian Maxwell said. “But it still doesn’t make it right.”
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