Federal prosecutors said in a court filing Thursday that the Bureau of Prisons has no plans to move Ghislaine Maxwell, longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein, into the general population of the New York City jail despite her lawyers’ claims that she is being held in “uniquely onerous” conditions.
Attorneys for Maxwell, who is being held without bail while awaiting trial for allegedly recruiting and grooming girls for Epstein to abuse, said she was being subjected to round-the-clock surveillance and numerous body scans.
Epstein died by suicide last summer at the federal detention center in Manhattan while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, and Maxwell’s lawyers argue that the Bureau of Prisons is treating her worse than other inmates as a result.
The attorneys asked that she be given a cell in the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center’s general population and be granted extended hours to review the materials prosecutors have assembled as evidence against her.
Prosecutors responded that “the defendant’s argument that she is being treated ‘worse’ than other inmates is incorrect,” and that inmates are routinely subject to search and surveillance.
“For reasons including safety, security, and the orderly function of the facility,” they said, Maxwell is not going to be fully integrated into the “dorm-style accommodations of the general population.”
Prosecutors said Maxwell “will be placed into the general population if and when BOP is assured that such placement would not pose a threat to the orderly operation of the institution.”
Prosecutors told the judge that so far they have turned over 165,000 pages of discovery to Maxwell, including 150,000 pages in the last week, “principally consisting of financial records.”
In addition, prosecutors said that Maxwell’s request to get the names of Victims 1-3 in the indictment against her is a request that is “premature, meritless, or both.”
They say that Maxwell can request the names as part of motions that are allowed to be filed in December, adding that they have included the months and years of births of the victims in the indictment as part of their latest discovery disclosures.
