Ghislaine Maxwell, declaring prosecutors didn’t prove anything, says she won’t testify

After 553 docket entries, 533 days in prison, 33 witnesses and 15 days in court, testimony in Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking trial concluded Friday, with Maxwell announcing she would not testify in her own defense.

“Your honor, the government has not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt so there is no need for me to testify,” Maxwell said in a statement she read from the defense table to U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan late Friday afternoon.

With that, the defense rested. Their portion of the case lasted just two days.

Maxwell, dressed in dark clothing and wearing a black mask, appeared regal as she spoke to the judge. After court was adjourned, she wrapped her arms around each of her masked lawyers, warmly embracing them for several moments. She smiled at her sister, Isabel, and her brother, Kevin, in the front row of the gallery but did not touch them.

The British socialite, perhaps one of the most maligned women of the #MeToo era, has served 18 months in prison awaiting trial. Bail was rejected four times because she was considered a flight risk. She and her family complained bitterly about what they considered inhumane and abusive conditions at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

The defense’s decision to rest Friday suggests that the jury could reach a verdict in the case before Christmas, which is also Maxwell’s 60th birthday.

Maxwell’s legal team appeared to be struggling to mount her defense Friday and was admonished by Nathan for delaying the case, one day after the judge had rejected several of their requests related to witnesses they intended to call.

Maxwell’s lawyers did call Eva Andersson-Dubin, the physician-wife of hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin and Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend, as a witness. But she couldn’t recall flights she had taken on Epstein’s private plane or people she had met. Upon cross-examination, she admitted she suffers from memory loss.

“I can’t remember the past or even something that happened a month ago,’’ she said.

There were other obstacles: The 81-year-old owner of the Nags Head pub in London, which is across the street from Maxwell’s former home, could not get to New York before Monday. Another witness, Kelly Bovino — who worked for Epstein — ignored a federal subpoena. Maxwell’s team dropped a threat to try to have Bovino arrested Friday for ignoring the subpoena., and backed down on their effort to call her.

Another witness in Britain couldn’t testify because he came down with COVID.

In the morning session, Nathan took Maxwell’s lawyers to task for not being prepared.

“I have a rule: You have your next witness or you rest,” Nathan said., adding later: “I’m not delaying the trial.”

Maxwell attorney Laura Menninger pleaded with Nathan for more time.

“Our client’s life is on the line,” Menninger said.

Maxwell’s trial, which began Nov. 29, was originally scheduled to take as long as six weeks, but the prosecution rested its case early, last Friday, Dec. 10. The trial was then put on hold for the first three days of this week due to a scheduling conflict. Nathan argued that even though the prosecution rested its case earlier than expected, the defense had plenty of warning about the change in schedule.

The defense built most of its case around discrediting Maxwell’s four accusers. On Thursday, defense lawyers called a renowned expert on false memory, Elizabeth Loftus, who told the jury that memory is not only infallible, but it can also be manipulated.

It was more than ironic, then, when the defense called Andersson-Dubin, who admitted on cross-examination that she has health issues that have affected her ability to remember things.

Andersson-Dubin, 60, was asked by defense lawyer Jeffrey Pagliuca about a claim by the first victim who testified under the pseudonym “Jane” that she was directed by Maxwell to have group sex with Epstein and other women whom she identified only by their first names: Eva, Michelle, Sophie, Emmy and Kelly.

Andersson-Dubin said “absolutely not,” when asked if she had ever participated in a group sex session with Jane or anyone else.

A former Miss Sweden, she said she had been Epstein’s girlfriend “on and off” for more than a decade before marrying Glenn Dubin in 1994.

Andersson-Dubin, a graduate of UCLA medical school, has been married to Dubin for 28 years. Virginia Roberts Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most vocal accusers, has said that she was directed by Epstein to have sex with Glenn Dubin when she was underage. A former employee of the Dubins testified in a 2015 civil suit brought by Giuffre against Maxwell that he encountered a 15-year-old nanny for the Dubins who was in tears and told him that she had been taken to Epstein’s private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands and pressured to have sex with Epstein and friends of his.

The employee, Rinaldo Rizzo, said that the nanny told him she had been physically threatened by Maxwell, who had seized her passport to keep her on the island.

The Dubins have denied that they were involved in any of Epstein and Maxwell’s alleged crimes.

Andersson-Dubin was asked by Pagliuca whether she had any issues with Epstein spending time with her three children, two of them girls, when they were younger. She said that she was comfortable with Epstein being with her children, and that they referred to Epstein as “Uncle F” — a shortened version of “Jeff.”

Andersson-Dubin was asked very little about Maxwell.

Later, the defense questioned a former receptionist for Epstein’s company, Michelle Healy, who insisted that she too had never had group sex with Jane. Prosecutors pointed out that there are many “Michelles” — suggesting to the jury that she may not have been the Michelle that Jane had referred to.

Bovino, a former model, had been subpoenaed for similar reasons, except she didn’t show up. Out of earshot of the jury, defense attorneys indicated that Bovino intended to plead the Fifth against self-incrimination. Giuffre has publicly accused Bovino of being part of Epstein’s inner circle.

Two FBI agents also testified Friday, as defense attorneys tried to cast doubt upon the accusers’ testimonies and timelines.

The defense tried to show that Jane and Kate could not have been in certain places at the times they said they were abused, as some of the years didn’t match events that they recalled. Jane, for example, testified that she first traveled to Epstein’s New York townhouse with Maxwell and Epstein in 1994 to see the “Lion King” on Broadway. But the Lion King didn’t open on Broadway until 1997. There were other inconsistencies between what she told law enforcement authorities and what she testified to during trial. Early on, she told the FBI that she couldn’t recall whether Maxwell was involved in the abuse.

Sexual assault victims often forget dates — and one of the challenges for the prosecution has been that the crimes Maxwell is charged with occurred over 20 years ago.

Maxwell faces six counts related to the sex trafficking of minors and is accused of recruiting and grooming several girls for Epstein’s abuse between 1994 and 2004.

Epstein was found dead in his Manhattan prison cell in August 2019 in what has been ruled suicide.

Epstein’s arrest came more than a decade after the eccentric financier had agreed to a remarkably lenient plea deal related to his alleged abuse of numerous girls in Palm Beach County, a deal that was the subject of the Miami Herald’s 2018 Perversion of Justice series. Maxwell was arrested on a 156-acre estate in New Hampshire roughly one year after Epstein’s arrest and has been held in federal custody since then.