NEW YORK, NY – SEPTEMBER 20: Ghislaine Maxwell attends day 1 of the 4th Annual WIE Symposium at Center 548 on September 20, 2013 in New York City. (Photo by Laura Cavanaugh/Getty Images)
Laura Cavanaugh | Getty Images
A federal judge in New Hampshire on Thursday ordered Ghislaine Maxwell sent to New York City to face charges that she conspired with her longtime friend, the late investor Jeffrey Epstein, to sexually abuse underage girls in the mid-1990s.
Maxwell was ordered into the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service to be transported to federal district court in Manhattan for a hearing on whether she should be granted bail pending the outcome of her case, in which she also is charged with perjury.
The order by Magistrate Judge Andrea Johnstone came during a so-called removal hearing, conducted remotely due to the coronavirus outbreak, in New Hampshire, where prosecutors had asked that Maxwell be detained without bail after her arrest Thursday morning in Bradford, New Hampshire.
Prosecutors had cited her risk of flight, her possession of multiple passports and her significant wealth in making that argument.
No court hearing has been set yet for Maxwell in Manhattan.
Maxwell, 58, was arrested at a 156-acre property in Bradford on a six-count indictment that was issued by a grand jury in Manhattan federal court.
The property had been purchased in December for $1 million by a limited liability corporation set up to conceal the actual buyer’s identity, according to prosecutors.
“The defendant is waiving the right to have a detention hearing in this district,” said Maxwell’s lawyer, Lawrence Vogelman.
Maxwell confirmed that she was waiving her right to a detention hearing and an identity hearing, agreeing with her lawyer that she wanted the detention hearing held in Manhattan federal court.
She answered “I do” and “I am” to a series of routine questions by Johnstone during the hearing, which lasted less than 20 minutes.
Vogelman declined to comment on the charges against Maxwell when contacted by CNBC after the hearing.
Epstein, 66, killed himself last August while being held without bail in a federal jail in lower Manhattan. His suicide came more than a month after he was arrested on charges of child sex trafficking.
In that case, the former friend of Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton was accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls from 2002 through 2005.
Prosecutors said at the time that Epstein was aided by unidentified conspirators with recruiting young girls to satisfy his sexual obsessions.