Prosecutors offer to drop perjury charges against Ghislaine Maxwell

NEW YORK —  The U.S. government will agree to drop pending perjury charges against British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell if her sex-trafficking case goes to sentencing later this year, prosecutors said.

The offer was made in a letter to a judge filed jointly late Monday by the prosecutors and Maxwell’s attorneys in federal court in Manhattan. Defense lawyers countered by asking that questions about the perjury charges be put off until the judge rules on their request for a new trial.

Maxwell, 60, was convicted last month of recruiting teenage girls between 1994 and 2004 for financier Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse. Two perjury counts that were separated from the main case accuse Maxwell of lying in a 2016 civil deposition.

At the trial ending with her conviction last month, Maxwell vehemently denied any wrongdoing. Her lawyers argued that she was made a scapegoat for the sex crimes of Epstein, her onetime boyfriend and employer.

Last week, the defense seized on reports in the British media saying a juror, in trying to persuade other panelists that Maxwell should be found guilty, had revealed during weeklong jury deliberations that he was sexually abused as a child.

Among other challenges, Maxwell’s lawyers are contending that the juror withheld his background before the trial in a way that compromised the jury-selection process.