A lawyer for Ghislaine Maxwell told the jury at her sex-trafficking trial that her client was “an innocent woman, wrongfully accused of crimes she did not commit,” and said the government’s case against her was based on “erroneous memories” that prosecutors accepted at face value.
The lawyer, Laura Menninger, began her closing arguments just before noon Monday with a shot across the bow at the prosecutors, who she said cherry-picked evidence to make their case, and at the women who testified against Ms. Maxwell at trial.
When the government began looking at Ms. Maxwell, Ms. Menninger said, “suddenly the women recovered memories, years later — they recovered memories that Ghislaine was there.”
She said women had come in to speak with the F.B.I. accompanied by personal injury lawyers. “Jeffrey Epstein died, and then everyone lawyered up,” Ms. Menninger said.
Ms. Menninger acknowledged that the government had “certainly proved” that Epstein was a “master manipulator” who abused his wealth and privilege. But, she said, “we are not here to defend Jeffrey Epstein.”
“You need to keep your eye on the thing that the government hasn’t — how these stories have changed dramatically over time,” Ms. Menninger told the jury. She turned to records of the victims’ interviews with federal investigators, which she said at first focused solely on Jeffrey Epstein and evolved with time to focus on Ms. Maxwell, at the urging, she said, of the government.
None of those dozens of meetings were electronically recorded by the authorities, Ms. Menninger said. “That was by design, so that none of us had a transcript of what took place in these interviews with the F.B.I.,” Ms. Menninger said.
“The tough questions weren’t asked by the government, so they had to be asked by us,” Ms. Menninger said.
Accusing the prosecution of engaging in “an old gimmick” by presenting testimony from an expert on grooming, Ms. Menninger argued that prosecutors had presented a threadbare case that depicted Ms. Maxwell as a cartoonish caricature.
“She’s Cruella de Vil and the Devil Wears Prada all wrapped up into one,” Ms. Menninger said.
She told jurors that the prosecutors had failed to present certain witnesses, including family members of the four women who testified that Mr. Epstein had sexually abused them with help from Ms. Maxwell. She also noted the government had not called multiple employees of Mr. Epstein who might have testified to a “culture of silence” around his misdeeds.
One employee, Juan Alessi, did testify that he believed he was expected to keep quiet about what went on inside Mr. Epstein’s Palm Beach home, where much of the abuse was said to have taken place. But Ms. Menninger dismissed his testimony as coming from a disgruntled ex-employee with an ax to grind.
“There was no culture of silence,” Ms. Menninger said. “You just got the sound of silence.”
Ms. Menninger also hinted that the government was withholding important information while referring to a handful of snapshots that prosecutors had entered into evidence as an attempt to show a longstanding and close relationship between Ms. Maxwell and Mr. Epstein.
Ms. Menninger called those images “innocuous” pictures of “a couple that was together” and wondered aloud what may have been depicted in thousands of other photographs obtained during a search of Mr. Epstein’s property.