With just over a month until the trial over British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell's child sex trafficking allegations, her lawyers have asked a federal judge to keep a proposed jury questionnaire under seal to avoid tainting a jury pool.
In court documents filed Tuesday, Maxwell's defense team asked U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan to seal the proposed jury questionnaire and preliminary examination - known as a voir dire - under seal.
Federal prosecutors agreed to the request, with Assistant U.S. Attorney Alison Moe writing in a two-page memo: 'The defense respectfully requests that the joint proposed juror questionnaire and joint proposed voir dire be filed under seal to avoid media coverage that may prejudice the jury selection.
'The government consents to the defense's request.'
Maxwell, 59, has been in jail since her arrest last July in Bradford, New Hampshire at her $1 million country home.
She stands accused of facilitating and participating in her ex-boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse of minors by recruiting teenage girls as young as 14 to provide sexual massages for Epstein.
She pleaded not guilty to the child sex trafficking charges in April, and the trial into her alleged wrongdoing is expected to begin on November 29.
Ghislaine Maxwell (right with her ex-boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein in 2005) stands accused of facilitating and participating in Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse of minors by recruiting teenage girls as young as 14 to provide sexual massages for Epstein
She pleaded not guilty to the charges in federal court in April
Judge Nathan previously denied claims that a non-prosecution agreement Epstein reached with federal prosecutors over a dozen years ago in Florida protects Maxwell from prosecution in the Southern District of New York.
Epstein killed himself in 2019 in a Manhattan federal lockup as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges.
Nathan also disagreed that some or all charges should be tossed out for a variety of other perceived flaws.
The allegations against her were reanimated with the Miami Herald's 2019 three-part series Perversion of Justice, which documented the actors behind Epstein's non-prosecution agreement.
Former Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta resigned shortly thereafter, as several big-name officials - including Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew - were caught up in the sex-trafficking scandal.
The Herald soon followed-up with an open-records battle, which persuaded the United States Court of Appeals to open up a largely-sealed docket in a civil lawsuit Maxwell's accuser Virginia Giuffre filed against her in
