Thread by @LuciaOC_

#BREAKING: 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. #GhislaineMaxwell #GhislaineMaxwellTrial

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. More on that momentarily. 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 by making it seem like this was the basis of their motion.

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.

I've just done a word search to make sure I'm not losing my mind — the motion for a new trial does not contain a single instance of any of the following words/phrases: "jury selection", "voir dire", "juror number 50", or "questionnaire".

OK, so a brief explanation of what the motion for a new trial *does* argue: it basically picks up on a couple of really contentious rulings that Judge Nathan made during the trial — rulings which anyone who was in the room would have guessed would be part of the defence's appeal.

The first ground for a new trial relates to counts one through four, and whether or not the abuse had to take place in New York in order for Maxwell to be convicted on those counts. This is something that the defence argued with Judge Nathan about repeatedly during trial.

The second major ground for a new trial is that there was not enough evidence to convict Maxwell on all three counts of conspiracy because the conduct across the three counts overlapped. "the proof at trial established, at most, a single conspiracy," the motion reads.

The motion then repeats their pre-trial argument that the trial was unfair because of delay in bringing the charges. And finally, the motion argues that Maxwell should get a new trial because "the government failed to prove each element of the charges beyond a reasonable doubt."

We don’t have all the facts right now, but based on the motion that the defence was forced to make public last night, here’s what it looks like:

Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyers wanted everyone to think they had prepared a motion for a new trial based on Scotty’s interview when they never did and probably never planned to. Scotty’s interview was never potential grounds for a new trial. #GhislaineMaxwell #GhislaineMaxwellTrial

The right-wing press and the tabloids published headlines suggesting it might be grounds for a “mistrial” and Maxwell’s lawyers saw an opportunity and ran with it. They used a sexual abuse survivor who fought through this own shame to tell his story as a pawn in their media stunt

Based on what we know — ie that there is no argument in the motion about Scotty’s questionnaire, and that the prosecution is fighting to have his questionnaire made public — it seems safe to assume that nothing untoward occurred with Scotty’s questionnaire or jury selection.

It seems safe to assume that he never misled anybody and did nothing wrong. But the defence team got everybody to attack him and blame him anyway.

In case you can’t tell, I’m furious.

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. Stay tuned.