Lucia Osborne-Crowley
@LuciaOC
https://twitter.com/LuciaOC_/status/1492520730696761359?s=20&t=_jBPqZn0xs8l1E1J2AVaug
Ghislaine Maxwell's motion for a new trial was unsealed at 1am ET this morning. It is **not** about the jurors who told the press they had been victims of sexual abuse. It does not contain a single reference to these jurors.
Instead, the motion for a new trial relates ENTIRELY to things that happened *during* the trial. It is a challenge to rulings that Judge Nathan made during the trial and instructions she gave to the jury before they went out to deliberate.
But first...What happened here? On my reading, either a) the defence realised that nothing untoward happened during jury selection in terms of the jurors who had been abused, but capitalised on the fuss made by the tabloids
Or b) there is/was content about Juror 50, and the others who said they had been abused, in the motion for a new trial that has since been taken out, or which has been wholly redacted (which would be a violation of the order that Judge Nathan made last night)
In any case, now we know why Maxwell's defence team fought so hard to keep this motion secret — because they wanted everyone to continue to believe that the motion was about Juror 50's comments about abuse/what he put on his questionnaire, when it wasn't about that at all it seems safe to assume that he never misled anybody and did nothing wrong…
To reiterate: we don’t have the complete picture yet, this is just based on the motion that the defence was forced to make public overnight. We’ll have to wait for Judge Nathan’s ruling before we have the full story.