Arrested socialite Ghislaine Maxwell’s Brooklyn jail cell is an unsanitary mess because of a broken sewage system at the jail, and not because she doesn’t flush her toilet, as prosecutors have claimed, her attorney Bobbi Sternheim, wrote in a new letter.
“The government’s letter provides the opportunity to flush out the persistent unsanitary conditions at the MDC, which long predate Ms. Maxwell’s detention,” Sternheim, who previously defended one of Osama Bin Laden’s henchmen, wrote in the letter filed Wednesday night in her Manhattan federal criminal case.
She then went on to detail the alleged sewage issues at the facility.
“This past weekend there was a pervasive stench of sewage in Ms. Maxwell’s unit necessitating guards to flush pipes by pouring water down open drains in an effort to trap and disperse gaseous emissions,” Sternheim wrote.
“At times the stench in Ms. Maxwell’s isolation cell has been overwhelming due to overflowing of toilets in the cellblock above,” the letter has it, continuing that Maxwell does her best not to use the bathroom in her solitary confinement, “due to lack of privacy,” but says that she flushes her toilet frequently, in line with advice from the guards.
Portraying the prosecutors’ rosy account of Maxwell’s conditions as “yelp-worthy,” the lawyer said it “does not justify her inappropriate detention.”
In their earlier filed letter, prosecutors, who are required to keep Judge Alison Nathan regularly updated on the socialite’s prison conditions, said that the MDC staffers had to direct the defendant to clean her cell because it “had become very dirty,” specially pointing out the odour as a result of Maxwell having failed to flush her toilet.
Last week, Maxwell, who was detained in summer 2020 as a suspected accomplice to convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, was slapped two new charges. Counting the new allegations, which her legal team has vehemently dismissed as “shocking and abuse of power,” Maxwell is to appear before court on eight federal charges.
Six of them, which comprise enticing underage children to be abused and lying on the earlier charges under oath, could put her behind bars for up to 35 years, should she be ruled guilty. The 59-year-old Brit has pleaded innocent to the initial six counts of sex trafficking.