Ghislaine Maxwell wants case tossed like Cosby's
Lawyers for Ghislaine Maxwell on Friday said the overturning of Bill Cosby's 2018 sexual assault conviction justifies throwing out charges against her - including sex trafficking - stemming from her relationship with the late Jeffrey Epstein.
In a letter to the judge, Maxwell's lawyers argued that the British socialite's case had been immunized under Epstein's 2007 non prosecution agreement - similar to Cosby, who was released from prison Wednesday after Pennsylvania's Supreme Court said a prosecutor's 2005 agreement not to charge him with drugging and assaulting a woman meant he should not have been charged a decade later.
They said the Cosby case supported dismissing four charges from Maxwell's eight-count indictment, which covers alleged crimes from 1994 and 2004 and could subject her to 80 years in prison.
Epstein struck his agreement with federal prosecutors in Florida in exchange for pleading guilty to state prostitution charges.
But the judge ruled in April that the agreement did not bind prosecutors in Manhattan... and rejected Maxwell's claim that it covered accused co-conspirators like herself.
The office of U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss in Manhattan declined to comment on the letter from Maxwell's lawyers.
Maxwell's trial could begin in November. The 59-year-old has pleaded not guilty.
