Ghislaine Maxwell’s new bail application was unsealed on Monday night, making public a suite of letters from friends and family that testify to her character. The alleged Jeffrey Epstein accomplice is currently being held without bail at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center after pleading not guilty to charges of perjury and aiding Epstein’s sexual abuse of minors. Maxwell was denied bail at her arraignment in July, but her new application proposes a $28.5 million bail package, and that she be transferred from the MDC to home confinement with 24/7 security surveillance.
The letters in the application are partially redacted in order to protect the identities of the writers and others named therein, but the first one comes from Maxwell’s husband—the existence of whom was revealed by prosecutors at her arraignment. As in Maxwell’s recently unsealed deposition from a 2015 defamation suit filed against her by the Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre, where Prince Andrew’s and Les Wexner’s names were redacted but easily identifiable, the redaction of Maxwell’s spouse’s name does little to obscure the widespread reports that she is married to the tech CEO Scott Borgerson. (The Daily Mail published a story last week about Borgerson and his kids reportedly missing Maxwell.)
“I have never witnessed anything close to inappropriate with Ghislaine,” Maxwell’s husband wrote. “Quite to the contrary, the Ghislaine I know is a wonderful and loving person.” The letter acknowledged that the writer was aware of Maxwell’s previous relationship with Epstein, but said that he never met or communicated with Epstein.
Maxwell and her husband offered to cosign a $22.5 million bail bond in the application, which they said would amount to all of their net worth. An additional $5 million would come from Maxwell’s friends and family who also wrote in support of her. Those letters provide a narrow glimpse into Maxwell’s social life and history, and are also piled with redactions. Several of them tout the authors’ long relationships with Maxwell, with one writer noting that “she has her father’s charisma.” The British media baron Robert Maxwell died in 1991 while he was on his yacht, Lady Ghislaine. The circumstances of his death remain the subject of some mystery, and it emerged shortly afterward that he had secretly amassed almost $5 billion in debt and tried to cover it with his employees’ pensions.
“Ghislaine was one of the original ‘it’ girls in London back in the day,” one of the application letters said. “Perhaps because of that ‘tag’ the media followed her activities for many years and on the back of the Epstein connection have now written defamatory and appalling statements about her quality of character.” The reference is one of many in the application to what is presented as Maxwell’s unfair treatment at the hands of the press.
“Because of her I have known more of the world, have had my imagination ignited and expanded in ways I could not have imagined,” the letter continued.
If one aim of the application was to change the perception of Maxwell as a well-heeled flight risk, the invocations of her social status may not be so helpful. After she was arrested, Maxwell proposed that she be held in a luxury Manhattan hotel, and at her July arraignment, the prosecution noted her “history of extensive international travel.”
Maxwell’s lawyers argued in the application, as they often have, that she is being held to account for Epstein’s crimes and not her own. Maxwell’s team has repeatedly sparred with federal prosecutors and the Federal Bureau of Prisons over the conditions she faces at the MDC, saying that Epstein’s suicide has been used as the basis for her restrictions.
Prosecutors will now respond to Maxwell’s application, at which point the judge in the case will review the arguments and determine whether to hold another bail hearing.
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