Ghislaine Maxwell lodges $28.5m bail bid involving armed guards

Socialite's lawyers argue she will not flee US over charges of assisting sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein

Ghislaine Maxwell has lodged a $28.5m (21.4m) bail bid that includes waiving her extradition rights and employing armed guards to protect her after receiving death threats, as her lawyers claimed she had been more ruthlessly vilified" than the convicted sex offenders Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein.

The British socialite, 58, is being detained at the Metropolitan detention centre in Brooklyn on charges that she helped procure girls as young as 14 for the late financier Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse in the mid-1990s, and of perjury.