Ghislaine Maxwell is in quarantine, prosecutors said in a court filing on Monday. The alleged Jeffrey Epstein accomplice has been held without bail at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center after pleading not guilty to charges of aiding Epstein’s sexual abuse of minors and perjury. According to the prosecutors’ letter to the judge in the case, an MDC staff member who works in the area where Maxwell is housed tested positive for coronavirus last week. On Wednesday, Maxwell tested negative, but was placed in quarantine for 14 days and will be tested again afterward. Prosecutors said she has exhibited no symptoms and that, as with other quarantined MDC inmates, she’ll be let out of her cell three times a week for 30 minutes.
The court filing also outlined the extent of Maxwell’s access to materials to prepare for her trial, which is currently scheduled for July 2021. Prosecutors said that she is allowed up to three hours of legal calls a day, and that last week, when her quarantine began, Maxwell was given a laptop to review discovery for 13 hours a day—the same allotments she received beforehand.
Maxwell’s lawyers have argued on a few occasions over her ability to prepare for trial, especially as the MDC has instituted measures that are allegedly aimed at preventing her from killing herself as Epstein did when imprisoned. “As was the case three months ago,” prosecutors wrote on Monday, “the defendant continues to have more time to review her discovery than any other inmate at the MDC, even while in quarantine. The defendant also has as much, if not more, time as any other MDC inmate to communicate with her attorneys, even while in quarantine.”
As the New York Daily News noted, a Justice Department watchdog recently said that the MDC failed to sufficiently test inmates and staff in the early months of the pandemic. A lawsuit against the jail over its handling of the virus is ongoing.
More Great Stories From Vanity Fair
— Why Princess Diana’s Controversial 1995 Interview Still Stings
— Inside Britney Spears’s Fight for Legal Control Over Her Life
— Prince Charles Will Wear the Same Royal Wedding Suit As Long As It Fits
— Internet It Girl Poppy Is Burning Down 2020 and Starting Again
— Curious Duchess Camilla Will Watch Herself on The Crown
— Can Princess Märtha Louise of Norway and Shaman Durek Live Happily Ever After?
— Prince William’s COVID Diagnosis Was “No Secret” Among the Royals
— From the Archive: Tina Brown on Princess Diana, the Mouse That Roared
— Not a subscriber? Join Vanity Fair to receive full access to VF.com and the complete online archive now.