Ghislaine Maxwell got a visit from her lawyers that was THREE TIMES longer than usual

Ghislaine Maxwell got a visit from her lawyers that was three times longer and with twice as many lawyers than usual.

The alleged chief recruiter for Jeffrey Epstein saw her attorneys for three hours compared to one hour for usual visits, court documents have revealed.

The British socialite met with two members of her legal team at the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn on August 28, including white collar defense attorney Christian Everdell.

Yet normally only one lawyer it allowed in for inmate visits.

The disclosure will raise further questions about Maxwell, 58, being given preferential treatment while awaiting trial for her alleged role in Epstein’s sex trafficking operation.

Prosecutors disclosed the details in a case brought by federal public defenders against the Bureau of Prisoners (BOP) over conditions inside the MDC.

The prison suspended in-person visits seven months ago due the coronavirus pandemic.

The New York Daily News had reported that Maxwell was the first inmate at the MDC to see her lawyers in person, sparking outrage from attorneys for other prisoners.

Sean Hecker, who is involved in the case against the BOP, called it ‘absurd and unjust’

But in a letter to the court in the Eastern District of New York, Acting US Attorney Seth Ducharme – who was appointed by Attorney General William Barr in July – denied that Maxwell got the first visit.

In fact another prisoner got a visit the day before, on August.

However, Ducharme revealed that Maxwell’s visit lasted three hours and passed ‘without incident’.

In a footnote to the letter, he wrote: ‘While routine legal visits will be scheduled in one-hour blocks, case-by-case visits can be longer, if requested.

‘Additionally, routine legal visits can also be longer than one hour, but the time slots for those visits are more limited’.

Ducharme claimed that when the BOP was considering restarting in-person visits at the end of August it wanted to do a few test runs so they looked at requests from the previous two weeks.

Maxwell’s lawyers were among those and were available on the slots available.

Maxwell is not referred to by name in the letter but Ducharme talks about a ‘defendant in a high profile case’.

In response to Ducharme’s claim, Hecker said in a letter to the court he was ‘troubled’ by the fact that Maxwell got one of the first visits.

He wrote that at the time of her visit she had been detained for less than two months which was ‘far less than a significant number of MDC inmates, including individuals (facing the death penalty), individuals with serious mental health issues, and individuals who have never met their court-appointed counsel because of the pandemic’.

Hecker said that normally inmates can meet with one of their attorneys for one hour and not two of them for three hours, as was the case for Maxwell.

Hecker said it was ‘puzzling’ that Maxwell was put ahead of other inmates and said federal defenders had made repeated attempts to request a visit, one of whom did so in mid August.

He wrote that this all ‘begs serious questions about what criteria the BOP intends to use to determine which inmates will be allowed to receive in-person legal visits, what those visits will look like, and how they will be scheduled’.

In his letter Hecker also revealed that guards were not following ‘basic protective health measures’ to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

This included not taking the temperatures of visitors, no social distancing by guards and one inmate having to sew together her own mask because the MDC did not give her one.

The mask fell off ‘repeatedly’ during the visit by her lawyers, Hecker said.

Maxwell’s lawyers have repeatedly complained about her treatment in custody after she was denied bail and said she is suffering ‘uniquely onerous conditions’.

They have griped about her being woken up every few hours at night and how she has to wear special clothing because she has been deemed a suicide risk.

They have claimed the lights are on in her cell 24 hours a day and that she was not allowed to shower for 72 hours.

But reports in the Daily News have painted a very different picture and claimed that other inmates had to clean and polish the floor in the area she is being held.

Female prisoners said that Maxwell has an entire floor to herself and has security outside her cell 24 hours a day.

She is also being given three hours of exercise time a day compared to two hours for other inmates, the reports said.

Maxwell, a British socialite, has denied six charges against her.

Prosecutors say that she lured girls as young as 14 to Epstein to abuse between 1994 and 1997 and in some cases took part in the abuse.

As well as the criminal case against her, Maxwell is also having to deal with a defamation case brought against her by Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts.

That has already seen hundreds of pages of sensitive documents made public including emails between her and Epstein.

Later this month the Second Circuit Appeal Court will hold a hearing on whether a deposition by Maxwell which discusses ‘extremely personal’ details about her sex life should be made public.