Ghislaine Maxwell worked “hand-in-hand” with Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse underage women, a federal prosecutor told jurors in closing arguments on Monday as she urged them to convict the British socialite of sex trafficking.
Alison Moe, the prosecutor, called Maxwell a “sophisticated predator who knew exactly what she was doing”, adding: “She manipulated her victims and she groomed them for sexual abuse.”
Moe’s two-hour closing argument came at the end of a three-week trial that advocates for her accusers believe will be the best chance to win justice for women allegedly abused by Epstein, who died by suicide in a New York prison after his 2019 arrest.
Laura Menninger, an attorney for Maxwell, countered that the government was trying to pin the blame on Maxwell for the sins of Epstein, her longtime confidante.
“Ghislaine Maxwell is not Jeffrey Epstein,” Menninger told the jury. “She’s being tried here for being with Jeffrey Epstein. Maybe that was the biggest mistake of her life, but that was not a crime.”
She also accused the government of wrongly portraying her client as a super villain, saying: “She’s Cruella de Vil and The Devil Wears Prada all wrapped into one.”
After receiving instructions from the judge on Monday afternoon, the jurors began their deliberations. They were set to resume on Tuesday morning. If found guilty on all six counts, Maxwell, 59, faces more than 70 years in prison.
With her siblings supporting her in the court, Maxwell scribbled notes and shuffled papers as Moe delivered a closing argument that pulled together a litany of evidence that prosecutors have presented throughout the trial. It included flight logs from Epstein’s private jet, phone messages and loving photos of Epstein and Maxwell taken over the years — all intended to demonstrate their tight bond.
The bulk of the government’s case rests on the often harrowing testimony of four women accusers who appeared during the trial. In each case, Moe said, Maxwell and Epstein “ran the same playbook over and over again”.
First, they identified girls from struggling families. None of the four, for example, had a father present in their lives, and all were strained financially. Then they lured them into Epstein’s world with the promise of help and gifts. Gradually, they pushed their boundaries before attempting to abuse them, usually through sexualised massages.
Accounts in Maxwell’s name received $30.7m in financial transfers from Epstein between 1999 and 2007, Moe noted, calling it “payment for committing terrible crimes”.
In addition to detailing the evidence, Moe appealed to jurors’ sense of propriety. “Ladies and gentlemen, it is not normal for an adult woman to teach a 16-year-old girl to rub an adult man’s feet,” she remarked at one point, referring to the testimony of one of the accusers. At another point, Moe asked: “Does it seem normal to you that two adults were spending their weekends on trips with a 14-year-old girl? Absolutely not.”
Maxwell did not testify on her own behalf. But in a combative — at times, contemptuous — two-hour rebuttal, Menninger attacked the four accusers’ credibility. They had agreed to co-operate with the government, she argued, under the advice of personal injury lawyers and in hopes of improving civil settlements they received through a victims’ compensation fund established after Epstein’s death.
“Memory fades over time, memory can be manipulated and money is a powerful manipulator,” she said.
Menninger was particularly withering with regard to an accuser identified only as “Jane”, who testified that Maxwell and Epstein approached her at an arts summer camp when she was 14 — months after her father died — and began to abuse her soon after.
The attorney dismissed Jane, who is now a professional soap opera actor, as “an actress who forgets her lines” and said her claims of childhood poverty were bogus.
She also suggested Jane might have been at least 16 when she first met Maxwell and Epstein, saying: “She has deliberately attempted to move the timeline back in order to make herself younger.”
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiP2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmZ0LmNvbS9jb250ZW50LzdlYTE2ZWRjLWJhZDEtNGY1Ny1hNzQ1LThiZDQ3Y2JmYzk1NNIBAA?oc=5
2021-12-20 23:30:20Z
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