Fox News correspondent-at-large Geraldo Rivera vehemently disagreed with U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan for denying alleged Jeffrey Epstein madam Ghislaine Maxwell bail on Tuesday, claiming the judge caved to the “mob” and “chickened out.”
Maxwell, who has been charged with four counts of child sex trafficking and two counts of perjury, pleaded not guilty to the charges on Tuesday and her trial was set for July 2021. Nathan then denied Maxwell bail, meaning the accused sex trafficker will remain in custody for a year.
“The court finds by a preponderance of the evidence that no combination could reasonably assure her presence in court,” the judge said. “The risks are simply too great.”
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Moments after Nathan’s bail decision, Rivera appeared to agree with Maxwell’s defense attorneys, who have argued in court that the alleged Eptein madam isn’t a flight risk and that she’s “been in regular contact with the government, through counsel, since Epstein’s arrest.” Prosecutors have countered that Maxwell attempted to flee when they arrived to arrest her and wrapped her cell phone in tinfoil to evade detection.
“I think this was a political decision,” Rivera said. “I agree absolutely that the question is not whether she committed these hideous offenses. The question is whether or not she would show up for trial.”
Rivera, who is also an attorney, pointed to Maxwell’s recent purchase of a New Hampshire home to argue that she “went to all this trouble to stay in the country” and yet she’s still being sent to a detention center that’s a “hotbed of COVID-19.”
“I think that if you take her passport, you put the ankle bracelet on her, she owns property now, she could have led this country long ago if she was so inclined,” he added. “Now to keep her there in solitary confinement, essentially for over a year awaiting trial, they are doing this to put pressure on her, the federal prosecutors.”
Then, in a similar vein as former Epstein lawyer and friend Alan Dershowitz, Rivera offered up a defense of the accused sex trafficker.
“They are punishing her before conviction,” he grumbled. “She has never been held liable in a civil suit, never been convicted of a crime. She is not Jeffrey Epstein.”
Rivera would go on to insist that Maxwell wasn’t necessarily hiding from the law over the past year but instead was running from the press, saying she was one of the “most sought after tabloid figures in the country.”
Brushing off her charges as “wobbly” because they are from alleged actions that took place 25 years ago, he knocked the judge for seemingly caving to political and popular pressure.
“For this judge to chicken out and not give this defendant bail, I think, is copping out to the mob,” he concluded.
