Jeffrey Epstein’s millionaire madam, Ghislaine Maxwell, barricaded a door with a cart full of legal documents inside a conference room at her Brooklyn jail facility, prosecutors alleged Monday in a letter to the judge in her sex-trafficking and obstruction of justice trial.
Prosecutors said Maxwell’s actions prevented staff from accessing the room, creating a “security threat.”
Maxwell’s attorneys denied the claim, but US District Court Judge Alison Nathan nevertheless affirmed an order allowing her to bring only what she can carry for her meetings with her attorneys, according to the New York Post.
Alison told the attorneys Wednesday to let her know if they have any problems communicating with Maxwell, said she was “confident that Ms. Maxwell is fully able to communicate with her defense counsel and to prepare for trial.”
Maxwell, 59, has pleaded not guilty to an 8-count indictment that accuses her of grooming teenage girls for convicted pedophile Epstein, who died in jail two years ago awaiting trial. Since her arrest last year, the British socialite has continually sought to be released from the Brooklyn detention center where she’s being held and has complained repeatedly about her treatment.
Maxwell attorney Bobbi Sternheim wrote to the judge on Tuesday, saying Maxwell prosecutors made the cart an issue “when it never was — to justify the restriction placed on the amount of legal materials Ms. Maxwell can bring into the VTC room on any given day.”
Prosecutors were unable to “resist the opportunity to gratuitously cast Ghislaine Maxwell in a negative light while it defends the Metropolitan Detention Center at all costs, regardless of the facts,” Sternheim’s letter said.
Maxwell’s trial is set to begin in late November. She faces up to 80 years in prison if convicted.
Follow CrimeOnline’s continuing coverage of the Ghislaine Maxwell case.
For the latest true crime and justice news, subscribe to the ‘Crime Stories with Nancy Grace’ podcast
[Featured image: FILE – In this July 2, 2020, file photo, Audrey Strauss, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, points to a photo of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell during a news conference in New York. Maxwell, criminally charged with aiding Jeffrey Epstein in his sexual abuse of teenage girls, testified in 2016 that she had no memory of anything amiss on his properties in the 2000s despite the accusations from dozens of women and girls that they were sexually abused by Epstein. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)]
