NEW YORK (AP) — A judge has rejected British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell’s bid to block the public and news media from jury selection in her New York City trial on charges she recruited teenage girls for financier Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse. U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan said Thursday that the press and public will be allowed to view the selection proceedings next month via video feeds to an overflow courtroom and a courthouse press room. She said two pool reporters will be let into the courtroom as she questions prospective jurors. Nathan says she strove to balance the public’s right to access court proceedings with COVID-19 safety.
Photo: In this courtroom sketch, Ghislaine Maxwell, far right, appears in Manhattan Federal court seated next to her attorney Bobbi C. Sternheim, second from left, along with her sister Isabel Maxwell, far left, during her arraignment on a superceding indictment, Friday, April 23, 2021, in New York. Maxwell, a 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. (AP Photo/Elizabeth Williams)
