By Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyers said on Friday the jailed British socialite may seek bail for a third time as she fights criminal charges that she assisted the late financier Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking of girls.
In a letter to U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan, Maxwell’s lawyers said a new bail application would “propose even more stringent and restrictive bail conditions” than the $28.5 million bail package the Manhattan judge rejected on Dec. 28.
Maxwell, 59, had proposed living under home confinement with electronic monitoring and 24-hour guard.
Nathan nevertheless said Maxwell, who also has British and French citizenships, “plainly poses a risk of flight.” The judge rejected Maxwell’s original $5 million bail package in July.
Maxwell’s lawyers also want to extend by 30 days a Jan. 11 deadline to appeal the latest bail denial. They said prosecutors oppose an extension.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to comment.
Maxwell has pleaded not guilty to helping Epstein recruit and groom underage girls for sex in the mid-1990s, and not guilty to perjury for denying involvement.
She is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, and faces up to 35 years in prison if convicted.
Epstein, 66, killed himself in a Manhattan jail in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
