Ghislaine Maxwell trial live updates: Latest news as Epstein pictured with socialite at Queen’s estate

Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of British newspaper baron Robert Maxwell and his French wife Elisabeth, was born in opulent Maisons-Laffitte in northern France on Christmas Day 1961, the youngest of nine siblings.

Just two days later, his teenage brother Michael was involved in a car accident that would keep him in a prolonged coma until his death in 1967, a tragedy that marked the family.

Ghislaine and her siblings grew up in Oxford in the Maxwells’ home in Headington Hill Hall, a sprawling mansion that also served as the headquarters for her father’s Pergamon Press, which, at age 14, Ghislaine would help by learning how to program a new suite of Wang computers that his father had introduced in 1973 as part of a modernization initiative.

Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial began with a sentence that attempted to summarize the complex case that spans decades and jurisdictions, and cuts across the normally secretive world of America’s ultra-wealthy elite.

“I want to tell you about a young woman named Jane,” prosecutor Lara Pomerantz told the jury of five men and seven women.

The US federal government’s case against Maxwell, 59, centers on his decades-long relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial is ongoing in federal court in New York, where the 59-year-old British socialite is accused of recruiting and grooming underage girls to be sexually abused by her ex-partner, the disgraced billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Maxwell has pleaded not guilty to the six charges against her and her defense attorneys have argued that they have simply made her a scapegoat for Epstein’s crimes after she died by suicide in jail in August 2019.

“Since Eve was accused of tempting Adam with the apple, women have been blamed for men’s misbehavior, and women are often vilified and punished more than men,” said her attorney, Bobbi Sternheim, to the court in its opening statement. .

Ghislaine Maxwell flew the maiden voyage of Jeffrey Epstein’s first private jet in 1991, the second of Epstein’s pilots to testify in a New York court said Wednesday.

David Rodgers recalled how he flew with Epstein on thousands of flights between 1991 and 2019, and Maxwell joined him on hundreds of those trips.

Rodgers said his flight logs showed that Maxwell and Epstein had flown on the Hawker Siddeley HS 125 recently purchased by the financier on July 26.

A picture of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell arm in arm on the Queen’s Balmoral estate has been published in the socialite’s sex trafficking trial.

The image, believed to have been taken in 1999, shows Epstein and Mrs Maxwell lounging on a bench on the deck of a log cabin on the grounds of the sprawling royal house in the Scottish Highlands.

Epstein’s arm is extended on the bench behind Ms. Maxwell, who has one of her hands on her legs.

He spent decades rubbing shoulders with British royalty and American presidents.

Now, British socialist Ghislaine Maxwell will be tried in a New York court on sex trafficking charges, and faces decades behind bars if convicted. The trial is scheduled to begin on Monday, November 29.

Graeme K. Massie has all the details here.

Follow The Independent’s daily coverage of the Ghislaine Maxwell trial and the most explosive revelations about the alleged sex trafficking carried out by the British socialite with her partner, convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Explosive revelations from Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein’s inner world, a vociferous defense of the maligned socialite have consumed the trial so far, Bevan hurley writes

Epstein has become an emblem of evil in the years since his arrest on charges of trafficking and sexual abuse of minors. He and Ms. Maxwell, the “supposedly respectable older woman,” were “accomplices in the crime,” equally guilty in the prosecution’s account for the heinous crimes that were allegedly committed.

Vocabulary has a role to play in how we view convicted sex offender Epstein and his partner Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking who operated for years with girls well below the duo’s age.

Margot Mifflin explains here why we need to get rid of the term “underage girls.”

The Ghislaine Maxwell trial has revived a meaningless term that must be abolished: “underage girls.” By definition, girls are boys and boys are minors.

The phrase implies that some “girls” are old enough to have sex with adults who are not criminals. Call them children, teenagers, teenage girls or minors, and call the crime committed against them for what it is: sexual abuse.

No “sex with an underage girl.”

Prosecutors on Wednesday released never-before-seen intimate photos of Ghislaine Maxwell, revealing her close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

The couple was seen in the photos kissing and hugging on yachts, private jets and gala events. Several others showed Maxwell giving Epstein a foot massage.

On Tuesday, FBI analyst Kimberly Meder testified that the photos were found on CDs taken during a raid on Epstein’s Manhattan mansion in 2019.

Bevan Hurley reports on this here.

The ex-boyfriend of Epstein’s third accuser, going by the pseudonym “Shawn,” said he would take three girls he knew to the late financier’s Florida estate in the 1990s.

He said that after dropping off the girls, he waited about an hour in the car to pick them up. After they showed up with $ 100 bills, they would leave the property.

“Shawn” was dating one of Epstein’s accusers, Carolyn, who identified herself only by her first name and who testified at the high-profile sex trafficking this week in New York.

They would use the money Epstein gave him to support his drug addiction, he told the court.