Ghislaine Maxwell’s Attack-the-Victim Strategy

a substantial risk that Maxwell would flee the country. The British socialite pleaded not guilty to charges that she helped her longtime boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein run a sex trafficking scheme

targeting girls as young as fourteen. The bail hearing offered a glimpse at Maxwell's strategy at trial and at her life hiding from authorities at a luxurious secluded a state in New Hampshire, guarded around the clock by a team of former British military Joining me as Patricia Hurtado, Bloomberg Legal reporter, pat you actually attended the hearing, So tell us what it was like in this in the midst

of the coronavirus pandemic. Well, it's of the first hearings that was held in the Seroal Courthouse in Lower Manhattan, and you know this is a place that's seen big trials, show trials of world Calm and Bernie made Off case and it's been shut down throughout the pandemic, and they opened it earlier this month for hearing and it's open to the public that on a restricted basis. You have

to get your temperature checks before you go in. We went in and they had the Central Jury Room, which is this massive room where the jury potential jurors gather before they go up to trial. They had this massive room, socially distanced chairs, so about six ft apart. It was seating for about sixty people, and they had giant screens overhead, and everybody was in remote places. So Glenne Maxwell was in a lawyer's conference room over a screen, probably a

laptop in the federal jail in Brooklyn. Per lawyer Mark Cohen was in his office. The judge was apparently at her possibly her home office. She was not in the courthouse, I was told, And everybody was appearing virtually, so it kind of unusual to see court not in court. Tell us about Maxwell's appearance. What did she look like? Well, her lawyer had complained that since she arrived at the MDC, they had not allowed her to take a shower for seventy two hours. She seems in great physical shape. She

had her hair pulled back in a bun. She was wearing brown looked like short sleeve jail fatigues. And she speaks in a very posh, clipped, educated British accent, very composed. She's had her shoulders squared, and she was really attentive throughout the hearing. Was there a separate hearing for the bail as opposed to the pola. The hearing happened in several chapters. The first one is they have to do a whole proviso where the judge advises everybody be and

and asks Maxwell if she's consenting to appear. Virtually, she has a right to be in the courthouse and have appearance, but because of the coronavirus pandemic, the courts are closed and this was going to be happening virtually, So that was the first part. Second part was she was arraigned and entered a not guilty plea, and then the next part was the prosecutors and the defense lawyers made their

best arguments for why Maxwell should get bail. Her lawyers were arguing or why she should not be bailed because she poses a flight risk. So let's talk first about some of her arguments for bail. Of course, COVID nine team and her lawyer is Mark Cohen, who's a former federal prosecutor in Brooklyn. He argued that she should get five million dollars bond because keeping her in the jail, it's cumbersome and too difficult to show her all these

thousands of pages of documents. He said he had to read most of the stuff over the own to her. Because all the federal jails are under shut down, they can't have attorney's visits for the reason that the attorneys could bring COVID into the jail or the virus could get spread, so there are no attorney visits. Everything's done virtually over video conferencing, So showing a client evidence over a screen and having them read it over the screen

is really really difficult. And they only get a limited amount of time anyway in these for these lawyer conferences, So imagine only getting an hour to share your clients two thousand pages of documents. So that was number one. This was going to hamper her ability to defend herself. Secondly, they argued she's at risk because she's fifty eight, that she could get coronavirus, but the judge noted that she had not raised any pre existing conditions that would possibly

put her at risk. So the judge, who has in the past allowed other people out of prison because of the virus, did not make a finding on that, so that was a losing argument for her. Now, one of the alleged victims testified. Her name is Annie Farmer. She says she was sixteen years old when she met Maxwell, and Maxwell invited her to meet Epstein because he was

going to offer her to pay for her education. She was invited for a weekend at this New Mexico retreat with other high school students because they were meeting this finance here who was looking for intelligent children to help back their education. And she find herself all alone with Epstein and Maxwell and a New Mexico ranch, and that's

when the abuse started. So she spoke out, and the victims are entitled to speak out, you know, don't allow this person out because of the harm they've caused me. That's under the federal world. I've been talking to Bloomberg legal reporter Pat Hurtado about Galine Maxwell's bail hearing. Was the prosecutor's argument, basically that there's nothing that can ensure that she won't leave the jurisdiction. Yeah, that was the argument.

Maxwell wanted out on five million dollar a bomb secured by six people unnamed to she said, we're siblings, unnamed. She wasn't putting up any of her money. She was offering to put up property about three point seven five million in the UK, that's hers, but she was not offering to put up any of her own money. The

government said she has all these mysterious finances. There seemed to be possibly fifteen bank accounts, including a Swiss bank account which appears to hold up more than twenty million dollars, and there's been a lot of transactions going back and forth where money would be funneled from an Epstein account to her account, back and forth. And they're not clear the origins of the money or how much she has. They know she has at least one Swiss bank account

and where this money went. She sold an apartment to townhouse It's pretty County on East sixty five Street on the upper east Side for about fifteen million a couple couple of years ago, and the government says we don't know where that money went. And then she bought this how in New Hampshire where they arrested her, you know, a hundred fifty six acres in Bradford, New Hampshire for one point two million, but it was purchased under an LLC. And the government said there were all these red flags.

When they questioned Maxwell, she they said she's been less than truthful. For example, when pre trial it is called pre trial services and it's the court people who interviewed the person and say, okay, you just got arrested. Tell us a bit about yourself. Do you have any bank accounts? You know, help us out here because we're trying to assess if you're eligible for bail or if you're too poor. You need as a sense lawyer so you can get

a federal defender paid for by the government. Maxwell. When they asked her where she lived, she said, oh, I live in a house. I don't know who owns it, but the people who own it let me live there. And the government said that was very curious to them because they got a call from the real estate agent who sold the New Hampshire proper the who said that they recognized Galae Maxwell as the woman who had come

with a man. The man said his name was Scott and the woman said her name was Jen, and how he introduced himself as retired British military who was working on a book, and she introduced herself as Jen Marshall and said she was a journalist who is looking for privacy. So the circumstances of I don't know who owns my house, but the real estate agent said, this is the woman

I recognized to introduced herself as somebody completely different. The government said these are ruses that show that she's willing to be less than forthcoming and hide off the grid to conceal herself, and that she's been hiding for the last year, and Judge finally decided with the government there was just too much risk and too many unknown factors about her. She's also a French citizen, and France does

an extradited citizens, so that's also a problem. We got some insight into how she was living while she was hiding in New Hampshire, including that she had a team

of former British military guarding her. Yeah, and the defense lawyer Mark Cohen was making an argument that Galais Maxwell has been the victim of a sensatiable media basically that have been going after her, so that Maxwell hired these people was a team of former British military who guarded her compound and that when the FBI says, when they got to her gate, it was locked. They had to

cut the lock. They were immediately confronted with a guard who demanded who they were, and they announced that they were FBI and they were there to arrest her. They go up to the front door and one of them looks through the window and sees Maxwell running away from the door, and then they announced themselves and they say they had to breach the door, and then they went

in and they found her hiding in another room. One of the agents found a cell phone wrapped in tinfoil, which they said was a misguided effort to avoid being tracked on her phone. Now, her lawyer said this is all because Maxwell has been victimized by the media who's always trying to track her down. So this is what

she did. She hired guard to protect her from the press, and that the phone last year sometime that he claimed that her phone had been hacked by British press and that's why she was wrapping it in tinfoil to avoid this phone from being hacked by the press. When the judge said no bail, you're going to be in jail for about a year until your trial, did she have a visible reaction. I mean, some people said they saw

her wiping a tear from her eye. What I saw is that almost looks like someone who was sitting up straight, very perky and attentive, and she had the look of you know, she was totally impassive expression the whole time. But when she lost that argument and the judge that I find her a risk, she has the ability to flee.

There's no circumstances I feel comfortable allowing her out. She seemed to deflate, and her shoulders sagged, and she looked she cast her eyes down and she stopped looking up, so it looked like, you know, somebody, the air went out of her. The defenses arguments at the bail hearing hint at possible trial strategies from Maxwell, and one was challenging the credibility and the motives of the alleged victims,

one of whom had just testified. Yeah, and one of the people that the defense lawyer Cohen went after was Annie Farmer, and he basically, in a kind of a parenthetical aside, said, you know, this is a woman who has filed a lawsuit seeking millions of dollars from this Maxwell, who has also applied for There's an Epstein Victims compensation fund est ablished out of this more than six million dollars that was in Epstein's estate when he died last

August in a federal jail awaiting sex trafficking charges. So in May they worked out a deal where they established this fund that would have trustees and the victims of Epstein's abuse could make applications to be compensated because of the abuse. And he was basically suggesting, don't listen to any Farmer because she wants money and she's seeking millions from Maxwell, and she's going to get millions from Epstein's fund.

Is that kind of attack on the alleged victims, who were teenagers at the time risky, especially in the me too era? Mighty backfire a trial? Um, Yeah, you know, it's interesting because I covered Harvey Weinstein's trial and it was a similar kind of approach that it has not and Bill Cosby certainly did it in his trial, so it hasn't been successful in the Post meets New World. And I asked, um, David Boys is a lawyer for

any farmer and he represents other victims. And I said, are you confident you know there's if you're aware of it. There's a history of litigation. Um. Some of the victims did sue Epstein in federal court. Um. There's a long travail of lawsuits and cases. Um. After the victims find out that there was a plea deal that Epstein got in the Southern District of Florida where he evaded prosecution,

they were upset that they were cut out. And you know, under the law, it's called a Crime Victims Restitution Act where victims can be have to be notified and then they get to participate and say this person did this to me, and I want you to judge to know to inform the judge for a sentence. Well, these people got didn't get told. And the women found out after the fact that he got a plea deal and it

was all over. The case was over. So UM, the as women basically want that there's a lot of out there. There's depositions, there's testimony. Um, they've spoken out, they filed lawsuits, So when I was asking David boys, are you worried about some of these victims that they may get assailed?

And are new confident that Annie Farm her, knowing what happened today, will be able to sit withstand this kind of cross examination if maxwell lawyers go after her, and he said, fine, I'm perfectly confident she's going to stand up just fine. So you know, it remains to be seen. It would be quite a trial because it will be Epstein's top lieutenant that these young women said, you know,

I was fourteen years old. I was sixteen years old, and this lady came up to me and she seemed so nice, and she befriended me, and she checked me into Epstein's world. Did the defense attorney also try to portray Maxwell as a bit of a victim herself here,

which seems like it would be a stretch before a jury. Well, he indicated that she a didn't know anything was going on, and then it seemed like he could possibly be indicating that that might be an avenue they're going to explore she didn't know what was going on behind closed doors. I wasn't there, I didn't know it. But secondly that

if she was involved. If there was any involvement, it was because she was in Epstein's thraw kind of signaled that he was going to raise that it's got to be it's going to be more developed, I believe, you know when we see down the road when these papers get filed and the motions start getting made and there's a July trial day, so we'll have a July twelve one trial day. That's literally going to be nearly two years to the day from when Epstein first got arrested.

In reading about it, it seems as if the defense attorney was just throwing everything against the wall to see what would stick, even saying that, oh, there were no video or audio tapes of what happened, which is certainly not a requirement right right, and and once that was one thing that David Boys was saying to me after the hearing, that, um, you don't need stuff in this day and age, and another defense lawyers said this former prosecutor said this to me that you know, that was

an argument you made, Oh there's no video, and people say, but there was this that argument was made before cell phone You know, people make cell phone videos all the time. And now we see what happened to George Floyd, for example. But there is the testimony. These these former prosecutors and boys were saying, if you hear the steering accounts from a woman, and the jury assesses whether that person is credible the story enough is going to be pretty potent

evidence before a jury. And the other thing the government says is they have travel records, photographs, and other material that will actually, um, you know, corroborate what these young women said happen, even though it's twenty five years old. I have to say that it seems as if since Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide that all the attention that might have been on his trial and him and all the blame is going to be pushed to her. Yeah. I

think that's what's happened. I mean, um, there's an speculation of if she played guilty, could she possibly give up other people in the network. But um, the former prosecutors I spoke to said, you know, you you view her. She was Epstein from the victim's accounts. She was Epstein's enabler. She was the one that enticed and lured these young women, teenagers, kids into his orbits and constantly funneled this these women. And then also the government says she was present so

that she kind of would quote unquote normalize the abuse. Well, it can't be so bad as this lady. She is, this nice lady. Oh you're asking me to take my clothes off to do a massage. Oh, well, the lady's still here, you know, and she helped normalize this a barrent behavior for these poor kids, many of whom were homeless or destitute or came from broken homes. So it's Jeffrey Epstein died in August of twenty but this is as close as you get to his second in command.

And you know, if she was involved with this, with this behavior as the as the victims say she was, then you know it's uh, there's there's a reason why she's going to go to trial. One final question, is anyone considering or is there a thought that since she'll be in jail for a year, that they'll be pressure on her to lead guilty. And I mean, would the

government even want to give her a deal? Yeah, some of the some of the people I was talking to said yes, this would be you know, she may get realized it's not so much fun being in lock up. It's not fun to be told when to take a shower. And the conditions at the Federal jail in Brooklyn have come under incredible scrutiny for the lack of you know, the women don't get enough air, they don't get time outside,

and they don't get even get sunlight. It's a Some of the dormitories are like one big giant room with a bunch of bunk beds side by side. And during the pandemic, they've been complaints that the women have been ordered during a lockdown. There's been some situations whatever security situations, and they're told to sit on their beds all day long and don't move, and they have to be escorted to go to the bathroom and they're not necessarily allowed to. So it's been kind of you know, it's not the

greatest conditions. So if she's in these conditions when she's used to living quite the life, living very well. She's the daughter of a British publishing baron, Robert Maxwell. She grew up, she went to Oxford, She's lived very very high life and now suddenly the reality may be sinking

in for her in a federal jail. Not a lot of fun facing federal charges that maybe it's time to kind of deal with the government and try to get some leniency, whether or not they get offered to her, and whether or not it's a deal that she accepts, and whether or not, you know, she might have to throw herself on the mercy of the court, and if whether or not she wants to give up other people and the government possibly might be suspicious if she starts

pointing fingers at other people when they know otherwise that she was more directly involved than they were. It's called cooperating down. So whether you would go point down to a person lower on the on pyramid, on the power pyramid and say, oh, it's their fault, you know, that's not going to look good for her before a federal judge trying to implicate someone else and claim that she's less culpable. So it remains to be saying, what's going to happen next? And if she gave up to other people, um,

who would they be. Someone likened this to somebody who's the head of a drug kingpin running a drug conspiracy right drug trafficking. The drug kingpin dies, but his top lieutenant is still around. So if that top lieutenant wants to plead guilty. Who are they going to implicate? There might be other people involved that they're the still number two in this this organization. So what they were suggesting to me as she may decide to point fingers at

other people, but they may just be other clients. And I'm not condoning those other individuals who may have been clients because they were having sex with underage girls. But um, in the world of who's culpable and Jeffrey and Epstein's sex trafficking ring, it's gonna be equation. The government's going to have to work out. Thanks so much for being on the Bloomberg A Show, Patty. That's Patricia Hurtado, Bloomberg

Legal Reporter. After last minute legal battles and exhausting all legal avenues, the Texas Republican Party has given in and is having its convention online. The Texas State Supreme Court refused to force the city of Houston to allow the party to host its convention indoors at the George R. Brown Convention Center as the city is fighting the coronavirus pandemic. Joining me is Bloomberg Legal reporter Laurel Culkins So Laurel

tell us about the legal whirlwind. Okay, well, it all erupted at the last minute, sort of the middle of last week when Houston's Mayor Sylvester Turner, after repeatedly trying and failing to convince the Texas Republican Party to shift to a virtual convention, instructed convention officials to find a

way out of the contract. And they've decided that the risk of six thousand more or less delegates coming to the city of Houston, which is an epidemic hot zone at this point, was simply too great a risk for a health stand point to both the attendees and a local convention and hotel and restaurant workers. So they triggered the forced masure clause, which is an escape clause in contracts that says, if you cannot perform this contract, you

don't have to. Okay. Immediately, two different groups of Republicans suit, and they suit on different grounds. The Texas Republican Party itself said, well, that's actually not forced masure. You can safely hold a convention for six thousand people in a hall built for fifty thousand people with appropriate social distancing and cleaning procedures. You just don't want to, and that's

an improper use of forced masure. Well, the other group, let's just call them the rogue Republican big wigs because

they're not actually the Texas Republican Party. They also sued, and they claimed constitutional ground that Turner, who is a Democrat, was squashing their constitutional rights to free speech and assembly and it was a political hit job by a Democrat at and the rival political party, And both groups made a great deal of the contrast between the way Sylvester Turner vocally supported the Black Lives Matter marchers, which drew sixty thousand protesters to Houston City streets last month, with

his saying, well, you can't safely have Republicans meet indoors with six thousand people this month. Now, the city said, obviously, an outdoor gathering like that is different than an indoor gathering, especially given the World Health Organization's recent guidance that tiny aerosolized particles of coronavirus can readily transmit the disease indoors.

That's the groundwork that all the fighting started on, and at one point it was actually active in front of three courts at the same time, but then quite a roller coaster. So take us through the legal proceedings on the lower courts all the way up to the Texas Supreme Court. There were two different lower court judges that were looking at the two different groups lawsuits separately. Both of the judges were Democrats, because all of the local

state court judges in Houston are Democrats. Both judges, for different reasons, rejected the Republican group's request for an emergency order forcing the city to put the convention back on track. So both of these groups over the weekend ran to the Texas Supreme Court. They just skipped right over the intermediate pelate courts, went straight to the Texas Supreme Court, which by the way, is all Republican, and they were hoping they would get a different answer there well on Sunday.

On Monday morning, hard to keep up. Monday morning, the State Supreme Court said, you know, nice, try, but even if your political rights are getting squashed, you don't have the right to commandeer the convention center when they've appropriately exercised an escape clause in a contract. So that ended that aspect of it. And yet there was still a local judge that had an emergency order in front of him.

Monday morning, so he held a hearing all Monday and essentially ended up in the same place that the Texas Supreme Court had ended up, where he said, it's a contract case. They properly invoked the escape clause. You can just fight about the damages down the road. We're not

putting the convention back on. That was Monday. So then Monday night, the state Republican party leadership their executive committee meeting and voted to go ahead and moved to convention into a virtual online basis, which they had sort of been planning for back since March when this whole pandemic

thing started gaining traction. They appropriately had a Plan B. So they voted to go to Plan B. And you would think that beie the end of it Monday night, but no, the die hard, the rogue Republicans refused to give up, and on Tuesday they grafted their constitutional claims over the convention being canceled to an existing lawsuit they had in federal court in Houston that was fighting actually on a different matter about the Texas governors COVID business

restrictions and contract tracing and all kinds of constitutional claims related to that business. And you think that was a stretch to try to join all those people together on that claim, and it was a stretch. But the reason they did it was the federal judge that they had drawn in that case is well known for anti government views. He he rules against the government every chance to get and he smacked them around in the process. So they thought, well,

it's worth a shot. And so on Wednesday, the federal judge Hella hearing almost all day long, and he tortured the City of Houston attorneys with questions that at one point seriously had been thinking he was going to put the Republican Convention back on track, until after hours late in the day the judge said, no, it's likely true that the Republican Party's political rights were trampled, you know,

violation of constant shores. But it's just too late and they have a plan B that they're already working anyway, So I'm not gonna let you do it. Is the end. It is, finally is. I was texting with the lawyer afterwards, and I said, you know, it's this, really it is. The silver bullet been shot into this thing. And uh. He admitted that it was just too late and they were going to have to go online, and in truth, they've been planning to do that as a plan B

all along. But you know, they want to have their party hats, they want to have their you know, crazy banners and and political meetings and that's actually their right as a political party to meet however they choot and however they prefer. That is a constitution all right, under both the state Constitution and the federal Constitution. But like the Texas Supreme Court said, in the midst of a pandemic and when certain conditions trigger the city can appropriately

say you just can't do that here. Thanks Laurel. That's Laurel Calkins, Lburg legal reporter. I'm June Brusso and this is Bilburg.