While being held without bail at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, Ghislaine Maxwell has been preparing for her trial, currently scheduled for July 2021. The socialite, who has denied all charges in relation to the case, including trafficking girls to the convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, has now enlisted a new lawyer, as Insider reported on Wednesday. Maxwell’s hiring of Bobbi Sternheim quickly drew attention for the attorney’s previous clients, most notably the Osama bin Laden aide Khalid al-Fawwaz, who was convicted in 2015 in connection to two 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 people. Sternheim’s firm, Fasulo, Braverman & Di Maggio, didn’t immediately return Vanity Fair’s request for comment.
The news came just before federal prosecutors in Maxwell’s case asked a judge to let them delay disclosing the evidence they’ve obtained, including “school photographs” of alleged Epstein victims, as NBC News reported. The outlet pointed out that the court filings demonstrate that the Epstein trafficking investigation is still underway and that prosecutors think providing Maxwell’s lawyers with the evidence could undermine the effort. The prosecutors said that the documents in question contain identifying information for victims who aren’t expected to testify and that they would “tend to reveal to [Maxwell] the scope of and evidence gathered” in the investigation, “the details of which are not currently public.”
Outside court proceedings, new allegations of Maxwell’s abuse and grooming have continued to emerge. Last week Molly Skye Brown told The Sun that Maxwell tried to groom her for sexual abuse when she was a 14-year-old in Palm Beach in 1992. (One of Maxwell’s lawyers, Mark Cohen, didn’t return V.F.’s request for comment at the time.) A woman who asked the tabloid to refer to her as Samantha said in a new story published on Sunday that Maxwell sexually assaulted her and that the socialite is “the real monster” in the Epstein ring.
“They stole my whole life,” the woman said. “I had a bright future ahead of me and they took that from me.” She said she had been a 21-year-old fashion student at Parsons School of Design in New York City when she was recruited as a masseuse for Epstein. Later, Samantha said, she met Maxwell, who brought her along to find other girls for Epstein. After Maxwell yelled at Samantha, she and Epstein allegedly raped the woman. Both Sternheim’s firm and Cohen didn’t immediately return V.F.’s requests for comment.
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