NEW YORK (AP) — A judge has rejected a $28.5 million proposed bail package for Jeffrey Epstein's former girlfriend, saying her incarceration is necessary to ensure she faces trial on charges she recruited teenage girls for Epstein to sexually abuse.
U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan rejected the proposed bail for Ghislaine Maxwell on Monday.
According to The Associated Press, Maxwell and her husband, who has never been publically identified, offered their entire wealth - $22.5 million - plus millions more of friends and family's assets to secure her bail.
But she did not immediately release an opinion explaining her reasoning.
Maxwell was arrested in early July.
She has remained at a federal lockup in Brooklyn ever since Nathan said there were no bail conditions that would ensure she would not flee.
“For substantially the same reasons as the Court determined that detention was warranted in the initial bail hearing, the Court again concludes that no conditions of release can reasonably assure the Defendant’s appearance at future proceedings,” Nathan wrote Monday in the order.
Nathan added that the government met its burden of persuasion that Maxwell poses as a flight risk.
“In reaching that conclusion, the Court considers the nature and circumstances of the offenses charged, the weight of the evidence against the Defendant, the history and characteristics of the Defendant, and the nature and seriousness of the danger that the Defendant’s release would pose,” Nathan added.
Epstein killed himself in August 2019 at a Manhattan federal jail as he awaited a sex trafficking trial.
