British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell should spend at least 30 years in prison for her role in the sexual abuse of teenage girls over 10 years by her onetime boyfriend, financier Jeffrey Epstein, US prosecutors said on Wednesday in written arguments.
Prosecutors said that Maxwell should serve 30 to 55 years in prison, reflecting federal sentencing guidelines.
They made their recommendations to the judge who is to preside over a sentencing hearing on Tuesday next week in the federal court in Manhattan, New York.
The 60-year-old Maxwell was convicted in December last year of sex trafficking and other crimes after a month-long trial that featured testimony from four women who said they were abused in their teens.
Defense lawyers said in a sentencing submission last week that she should spend no more than five years in prison and should not pay for Epstein’s crimes, as he was the mastermind and principal abuser, and “orchestrated the crimes for his personal gratification.”
Epstein died in 2019 in jail as he was awaiting a Manhattan federal sex trafficking trial.
However, prosecutors said that Maxwell played an “instrumental role in the horrific sexual abuse of multiple young teenage girls” between 1994 and 2004 at some of Epstein’s residences.
“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. In her wake, Maxwell left her victims permanently scarred with emotional and psychological injuries,” they wrote. “That damage can never be undone, but it can be accounted for in crafting a just sentence for Maxwell’s crimes.”
Prosecutors also urged the judge to reject Maxwell’s pleas for leniency on the grounds that she has suffered in extraordinary ways in jail while awaiting trial and afterward.
Defense lawyers said she has faced death threats and harsh conditions that have caused her to lose hair and weight.
Maxwell’s appearance at trial proved those claims were wrong, prosecutors said, adding: “The defendant is perfectly healthy, with a full head of hair.”
They said Maxwell “has enjoyed remarkable privileges as a high-profile inmate that vastly exceed the benefits accorded to the average inmate. It is unsurprising that a woman who had led a life of incredible luxury should complain about her life as a prisoner, but that fact does not come close to meriting leniency at sentencing, much less the extraordinary degree of leniency the defendant seeks.”
Prosecutors also attacked claims by Maxwell’s lawyers that she suffered “a credible death threat” in jail, saying that an internal probe of the purported threat revealed that an inmate remarked to someone in passing something to the effect of: “I’d kill her if someone paid me a million dollars.”
As a result, someone who overheard the remark reported it and the inmate was moved from the housing unit, they said.
They also cited what they described as Maxwell’s “complete failure to address her offense conduct and her utter lack of remorse.”
“Instead of showing even a hint of acceptance of responsibility, the defendant makes a desperate attempt to cast blame wherever else she can,” they wrote.
“The defendant’s access to wealth enabled her to present herself as a supposedly respectable member of society who rubbed shoulders with royalty, presidents, and celebrities,” they wrote. “That same wealth dazzled the girls from struggling families who became the defendant and Epstein’s victims.”
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a