NEW YORK — Lawyers for Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime companion of Jeffrey Epstein, sought to distance her from the disgraced financier Thursday, saying in a new court filing that the two had no contact for more than a decade before his death in August.
The filing said her attempts over the past year to avoid detection were not meant to evade law enforcement officials but to protect herself against “unrelenting and intrusive media coverage,” according to her lawyers.
“Ghislaine Maxwell is not Jeffrey Epstein,” they wrote.
Maxwell, 58, has been in federal custody since her arrest eight days ago in Bradford, N.H. On Thursday, Maxwell’s lawyers asked a federal judge in Manhattan to release her from jail on $5 million bond, arguing that she did not pose a flight risk.
The indictment against Maxwell charged that from 1994 to 1997, she helped Epstein recruit, groom and ultimately sexually abuse girls who were as young as
- Maxwell also participated in some of the abuse and lied about her conduct when questioned under oath in 2016 in a lawsuit, the indictment said.
Maxwell is scheduled to appear Tuesday before a Manhattan federal judge who will decide whether she should be released pending trial. She is charged with s i x co u n t s , including enticing a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts and perjury.
Maxwell has not yet entered a plea, but her lawyers wrote in Thursday’s filing that she “has always vehemently denied that she was involved in illegal or improper conduct related to Epstein.”
Prosecutors said Maxwell — who is a citizen of the United States, France and Britain — had three passports and posed “an extreme risk of flight.” They also said they had identified more than 15 bank accounts linked to her, where the total balance at times exceeded $20 million.
Maxwell’s lawyers disputed the notion that she was likely to flee if granted bail.