Ghislaine Maxwell has pleaded not guilty to federal sex trafficking charges that allege she helped the late financier Jeffrey Epstein recruit and sexually abuse girls.
Ms Maxwell, 59, entered her plea in person before US District Judge Alison Nathan in Manhattan, to charges that were included in an eight-count indictment unveiled on March 29.
The British socialite and one-time girlfriend of Epstein, pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking conspiracy and an additional sex trafficking charge that were added in a rewritten indictment released last month by a Manhattan federal court grand jury.
The new indictment stretched the timespan of the charges from three years to a decade.
Her lawyers maintain they need months of additional preparation because of the new charges, making it impossible to keep a July 12 trial date.
Prosecutors have said the new charges should not require substantial additional work because they add a single victim to the three victims already described in the indictment.
The new charges accused Ms Maxwell of grooming and paying a girl who, starting at age 14, gave Epstein nude massages and engaged in sex acts with him from 2001 to 2004, and that the girl recruited others to offer erotic massages.
They previously had charged Ms Maxwell with helping Epstein recruit and groom three other girls for him to sexually abuse from 1994 to 1997.
Ms Maxwell pleaded not guilty to the earlier charges, which included two perjury counts.
Her trial is scheduled to begin on July 12. The perjury counts would be handled separately in a second trial.
The hearing marked the first time Ms Maxwell has publicly appeared in person since her arrest last July at her home in New Hampshire, where prosecutors said she had been hiding out.
She appeared by video in her prior arraignment.
Ms Maxwell has been jailed in Brooklyn since her arrest. If convicted on all charges, she faces up to 80 years in prison.
Epstein took his own life at a Manhattan federal jail in August 2019 while awaiting a sex-trafficking trial.
ABC/wires
