Introducing 'Court Appearances: The Trial of Ghislaine Maxwell'

My name is Choire Sicha, and I’m a writer here at New York Magazine. We’d like you to join us on an experimental adventure. Would you like to know more?

Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime confidante, is going on trial in New York City for her role in Epstein’s abuse of girls. Maxwell says she’s completely innocent. The victims will testify otherwise.

You’ll be hearing a lot about this. But I’d like to take you on a stranger journey through the trial and through the nightmare wormhole that is the Jeffrey Epstein–Ghislaine Maxwell universe. I’d like to take you along with us to the courtroom, the streets outside, and inside the tabloid media that fuels her tale.

In a new limited-run newsletter called Court Appearances, I’ll be sending you irregular updates — maybe two or three times a week? — when we think there are noteworthy developments. How long will this last? Could be days, weeks, months, years. With a situation this unusual, there’s no way to tell.

This case, full of tragedy and horror, is also stuffed with bizarre dark comedy, particularly as Maxwell has run the media around the world for years. Was that Maxwell, photographed reading a spy book at an In-N-Out Burger in Los Angeles? Probably not, no! Was that her in Paris, with a shawl over her head? Nope, in fact, that was probably a paid impersonator.

It’s only going to get weirder from here. Please join us on this next segment of this peculiar trip.

- Choire Sicha, New York Magazine