Jeffrey Epstein’s ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell has her third bail application rejected, with a US judge deeming her a “significant” flight risk.

Ms Maxwell has been in a New York prison since July 2020, awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

Those charges are similar to what convicted pedophile Epstein was arrested for, when he took his own life in prison in August 2019.

Ms Maxwell’s latest bail application offered to trade her freedom for her renouncing both her British and French citizenships.

• Related: Ghislaine Maxwell’s jail conditions ‘are torture’

It also included a $US28.6 million ($36.8 million) bail package.

District Judge Alison Nathan in Manhattan denied her request on Monday, saying no amount of bail money or lack of citizenships would assure she would turn up in court.

Maxwell, right, in 2000 with Donald Trump,his then-girlfriend Melania Knavs and Jeffrey Epstein.

Ms Maxwell, 59, has pleaded not guilty to charges she helped Epstein recruit and groom three teenage girls for sex between 1994 and 1997, and lied about her role.

After Judge Nathan rejected two prior bail requests, Ms Maxwell offered to renounce her non-US citizenships, and move most of her and her husband’s assets into an account to be monitored by a retired federal judge.

Her lawyers said Ms Maxwell wanted to defend herself at trial and the new conditions should assuage concern she might seek a “safe haven” in the United Kingdom or France.

She was arrested at her private estate in the remote New Hampshire. She’s due to face trial in July.

Ms Maxwell has said the government targeted her only because Epstein killed himself and prosecutors wanted someone else to blame, and that she was covered by Epstein’s own 2008 non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors in Florida.

She’s made several pleas for her safety – claiming that Epstein was murdered, not died by suicide – and she’s currently held in isolation in a Brooklyn jail.

-with AAP