Ghislaine Maxwell quarantining over possible Covid exposure in prison

She is being held at Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn

Ghislaine Maxwell has been put into quarantine after staff tested positive for Covid-19 (via REUTERS)

British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell is quarantining after staff at the jail she is being held in tested positive for Covid-19, US prosecutors have said.

Last week, workers at the prison, where Ms Maxwell is being held on charges she aided late financier Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse of girls, tested positive for the virus. Ms Maxwell was subsequently tested on 18 November and had a negative result.

She is now quarantining for 14 days at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, prosecutors said in a letter sent to US District Judge Alison Nathan on Monday.

She is allowed to leave her cell three times a day for 30 minutes during which she can make personal phone calls. Legal calls to her lawyers are permitted for three hours a day in a room where she is alone without jail staff.

The FBI announced she was under investigation in connection with Epstein’s crime. She was later arrested in Bradford, New Hampshire, in July 2020.  

Ms Maxwell, 58, has pleaded not guilty to helping Epstein recruit and groom underage girls as young as 14 to engage in illegal sexual acts in the mid-1990s, and not guilty to perjury for having denied involvement in such a scheme when she gave her deposition under oath. Her trial is scheduled for July 2021.

Epstein was being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York, awaiting trial after being accused of sex trafficking,  when he was found dead in his cell.

Coroners’ reports and an investigation by the FBI and the Justice Department’s inspector general ruled Epstein’s death a suicide. The Bureau of Prisons has also completed an investigation into the circumstances around his death but it will not be made public.

In recent weeks, Ms Maxwell’s lawyers have been attempting to block the release of a deposition from a settled civil case which she was involved in.

It comes from a libel and slander case against Ms Maxwell and Epstein, which was filed by Virginia Roberts Giuffre. Ms Giuffre claims she was sexually trafficked by Epstein and Ms Maxwell for years and forced to have sex with Prince Andrew. The Prince has always denied her claims and has never been charged with any crime.

In July a New York City judge, Loretta Preska, ordered that the depositions from that case be released, given the overwhelming public interest in the case.

Lawyers for Ms Maxwell attempted to stop the first batch of depositions from being published, but they lost their bid. The 465-page transcript from April 2016 was released last month. The second deposition, from July 2016, is due to be released by the end of November.

Laura A Menninger, her attorney, said the second load of documents risk prejudicing a jury at her forthcoming trial.

"There can be no doubt that matters concerning Ms Maxwell’s case have been excessively and extensively reported," Ms Menninger said in her objection to the release of the second deposition, obtained by the Miami Herald.

"The press, the government, and plaintiff have made every effort to try Ms Maxwell as a proxy for the now deceased Mr Epstein.

"The prejudice caused by the flood of coverage that comes with every new unsealing event in this case cannot be overstated."

In a separate case, Ms Maxwell has sued Epstein’s estate, which is being settled in the US Virgin Islands, and claimed Epstein promised to pay her legal bills and did so up until the day he died in August 2019.

The estate says no such deal was ever made.

With reporting from Reuters