The isolation cell Ghislaine Maxwell is being held in at a Brooklyn jail is so gross, vermin droppings recently fell from the air vents and raw sewage “permeated” throughout it last week, her lawyer claimed in court filing Tuesday night.
The disgraced British socialite had to be moved to another cell last week because of the stench of raw sewage in her cell at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunset Park, her attorney, Bobbi Sternheim, wrote in a letter to Manhattan federal court Judge Alison Nathan.
In addition, “vermin droppings fell from the air vents,” Sternheim added — the latest in a litany of complaints regarding the conditions at the lockup.
The disgusting details were included in a lengthy list of bullet points in the letter, which Sternheim filed in response to a letter from prosecutors to update the judge on conditions Maxwell faces at the lockup.
Sternheim also griped about jail guards monitoring legal visits Maxwell has with her attorneys at the facility and faulty computer equipment provided for video conferences between her and the legal team.
At the end of the letter, Sternheim included a transcript of a recent sentencing in an unrelated case, in which Manhattan federal court Judge Colleen McMahon blasted conditions at both federal jails in the city, saying they are “run by morons.”
“[T]here is no excuse for the conditions in those two institutions. . .. [Detainees]
shouldn’t suffer for the incompetence of the United States Department of Justice
and its subsidiary agency, the Bureau of Prisons,” McMahon said at the sentencing of convicted drug dealer Tiffany Days.
“I will do what I can to bring your situation to the people who, if they give a damn, might do something,” she added.
Maxwell has been held at the MDC since her arrest in July 2020.
She was ordered held without bail after her arrest, which she has appealed five times since being remanded. Her attorneys have argued repeatedly that she is being unfairly punished because the Bureau of Prisons let her alleged cohort, Jeffrey Epstein, kill himself at a Lower Manhattan lockup in August 2019.
Maxwell is accused of procuring underage girls for Epstein to abuse in the 1990s and early 2000s and lying under oath.
She’s pleaded not guilty and her trial is scheduled to start in the fall.