Ghislaine Maxwell’s Lawyers Plan to Call 35 Defense Witnesses
Ghislaine Maxwell’s Lawyers Plan to Call 35 Defense Witnesses
(Bloomberg) -- Ghislaine Maxwell’s defense team has listed 35 witnesses that they plan to call in her defense, according to a court filing.
The identities of the witnesses is not public, but prosecutors revealed the number in a letter to the judge Sunday.
Maxwell’s defense is due to begin on Thursday, after the government rested its case against her on Friday. Last week, her lawyers said they were undecided if they were going to call any witnesses in her defense. She has pleaded not guilty to multiple charges in the case, including sex trafficking.
Three of the defense witnesses have asked to testify under their first names or a pseudonym, but the prosecutors oppose this, Maxwell’s lawyer Bobbi Sternheim said in a filing late Sunday. Maxwell’s four accusers were allowed to testify against her over the first two weeks of the trial with pseudonyms or using only their first names.
“The Court’s ruling on this issue may impact the willingness of these witnesses to testify, thereby compromising Ms. Maxwell’s right to present her defense, and may affect the witness order,” Sternheim wrote to the judge.
The prosecutors had complained to the judge that the defense didn’t tell them the order in which the witnesses will be called. Sternheim wrote that the defense has provided a tentative order, but that it is “still trying to make travel arrangements for defense witnesses, many of whom are coming from locations out of the district and abroad.”
The case is U.S. v. Maxwell, 20-cr-00330, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
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