Ghislaine Maxwell was expected to appeal her sex trafficking conviction on Tuesday (Picture: Reuters)
Disgraced socialite Ghislaine Maxwell is set to ask an appeals court to toss her conviction for helping the late Jeffery Epstein sexually abuse teenage girls.
Maxwell, 61, was expected on Tuesday to file legal arguments stating that prosecutors made her a scapegoat because Epstein was dead and that the case was chock full of errors.
‘The government prosecuted Ms Maxwell as a proxy for Jeffrey Epstein’ to satisfy ‘public outrage’ around the case, stated her lawyer Arthur Aidala. The government also worked with Epstein’s accusers ‘to develop new allegations out of faded, distorted, and motivated memories’, Aidala claimed.
Maxwell was expected to file her argument with the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan.
She is serving a 20-year prison sentence after a jury convicted her on five charges for recruiting and grooming four teenage girls for Epstein to abuse, from 1994 to 2004.
Epstein, who was an American financier and registered sex offender, killed himself in a jail cell in Manhattan in August 2019 as he was awaiting his sex trafficking trial.
Maxwell was convicted in December 2021 and is behind bars at the Federal Correctional Institute in Tallahassee, Florida.
She was reportedly placed in solitary confinement after giving an interview to talk TV last month. Maxwell spoke about jail life and blamed Epstein for her predicament in the series of taped and voice calls. Jail officials reportedly started a probe into the matter because inmates are only permitted to have video visits from lawyers and vetted family and friends.