Ms. Maxwell was arrested in July 2020, and has been detained on charges she helped Mr. Epstein recruit, groom and sexually abuse underage girls. An indictment also accused Ms. Maxwell of involvement in the sex trafficking of a 14-year-old girl, saying that she groomed the girl to engage in sexual acts with Mr. Epstein and later paid her.
Ms. Maxwell has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
In their request to have the suit dismissed, Andrew’s lawyers also argued that Ms. Giuffre’s claims were barred under terms of a 2009 settlement release reached in a lawsuit she had filed against Mr. Epstein in Florida.
David Boies, a lawyer for Ms. Giuffre, said in a statement that Andrew’s motion to dismiss “fails to confront the serious allegations” in Ms. Giuffre’s suit.
Mr. Boies said that Andrew’s “attempted reliance on an irrelevant 13-year-old release, to which he is not a party, and which he did not even know about until recently, is just another in a series of attempts to avoid facing the merits of the serious charges against him.”
As the court battle over Ms. Giuffre’s lawsuit against Prince Andrew escalated on Friday, dueling legal papers were filed by federal prosecutors and lawyers for Ms. Maxwell in her case before a different judge, Alison J. Nathan, in the same federal court in Manhattan. Ms. Maxwell’s trial is scheduled to be begin there on Nov. 29.
The prosecutors asked that some of Ms. Maxwell’s accusers be allowed to testify using pseudonyms or first names, citing concerns about publicity, harassment and the risk of “significant embarrassment, anxiety and social stigma.” Ms. Maxwell’s lawyers argued in their motion that this would create unnecessary confusion and prejudice the jury against Ms. Maxwell.
Federal prosecutors also revealed that the four women described as victims in the indictment would testify at trial, in “explicit detail,” about sexual abuse that took place before they were 18 years old, and about how they were recruited by — and in turn recruited — other victims who were minors.