Ghislaine Maxwell's Trial Opens a New Chapter in Heinous Jeffrey Epstein Saga

For those following the Jeffrey Epstein story, the past two years have felt like driving around a curve that never ends. Answers to the key questions at the heart of the vast scandal have seemed tantalizingly close and frustratingly out of reach. How did the late pedophile earn his estimated half-billion-dollar fortune? Which powerful men participated in his sex-trafficking ring? What about all those surveillance videos from inside his homes? On November 29, lawyers are set to deliver opening statements in the highly anticipated trial of Epstein’s alleged accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. For Epstein’s victims, it will be an opportunity for justice long denied. For the rest of us, it may be our best and last chance to unravel the Epstein enigma. 

Maxwell is being tried on six counts, including conspiracy to transport underage girls to engage in illegal sexual activity. The indictment cites four victims whom, prosecutors say, Maxwell groomed between 1994 and 2004 when the women were minors (some as young as 14 at the time). Prosecutors allege Maxwell befriended the girls, took them shopping and to the movies, and delivered them to Epstein to be abused, often in Maxwell’s presence. Maxwell vehemently denies the charges. “I have not committed any crimes,” she said at a pretrial hearing on November 1. Her lawyers have attacked the government’s case on several fronts. In pretrial motions they argue that Maxwell is being unfairly punished because the government failed to prosecute Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 before he could be brought to trial. They’ve also excoriated the inhumane conditions at the Metropolitan Detention Center, where Maxwell has been held in solitary confinement for the past 16 months. If convicted, the 59-year-old Maxwell faces up to 80 years in prison. Effectively, she is on trial for her life.