The facts
As Maxwell prepares to face trial on charges she groomed underage victims to have unwanted sex with Epstein, her former boyfriend, social media users are circulating a months-old list of names and companies, falsely claiming they are co-conspirators in Maxwell's criminal case.
But the list comes from a separate civil lawsuit that was filed in August 2020 and dismissed less than a month later. It is not part of the ongoing criminal case against Maxwell, according to online court records.
The dismissed civil case had named nearly 40 defendants, including Epstein, Jay-Z, Beyonce, Kanye West, Disney and Universal Music Group. Maxwell was included as the 31st defendant on the list.
The lead plaintiff alleged that over the course of 30 years, the defendants conspired to "unlawfully surveil, drug and abduct" them "for sexual assault, sex trafficking, and other exploitative abuse" and conspired to transact a "purchase agreement" to buy the plaintiff from their mother. The lawsuit also alleged that the defendants exploited the plaintiff's "economic prowess and unique abilities to pick stocks, predict business/market trends and create very lucrative trade secrets."
US District Judge Louis L Stanton, for the Southern District of New York, dismissed the lawsuit on the grounds it did not have a legal or factual basis, and that the plaintiff, who did not appear to be an attorney, made claims on behalf of others, according to the dismissal order.
Representatives for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York did not immediately return a request for comment.
Some social media users began circulating excerpts from the court documents, erroneously asserting they were recently unsealed documents from Maxwell's criminal case.
One person posted a screenshot of the civil suit on a conservative chat forum in September and wrote: "Ghislaine Maxwell court case documents were just unsealed!!! The list of defendants is insane."
The false claim has continued to circulate, with a Twitter user on Sunday sharing screenshots containing the list of defendants from the civil suit alongside the claim that the "Ghislaine Maxwell co-conspirator list" had been released.
But two different cases — the civil lawsuit and Maxwell's criminal case — are being conflated.
Maxwell was arrested in July 2020 after a grand jury indicted her on multiple federal charges following an investigation by the FBI and the New York City Police Department. US District Judge Alison J Nathan is set to preside over Maxwell's criminal trial in Manhattan federal court.
Further, no such list of "co-conspirators" has been released in Maxwell's case. And Nathan has made clear there will be no name-dropping at trial, saying only certain pages of an address book that investigators seized — showing a section naming the alleged victims — will come into evidence, according to previous reporting by the AP.
Jury selection is currently underway and the trial is expected to begin on November 29. Maxwell has pleaded not guilty to her charges and denied wrongdoing.
Epstein killed himself in a federal detention centre in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. His lawyers contended the charges violated a 2008 non-prosecution deal with federal prosecutors in Miami that secretly ended a federal sex abuse probe involving at least 40 teenage girls. After pleading guilty to state charges in Florida instead, he spent 13 months in jail and paid settlements to victims.
- AP
