Famed Attorney, Alan Dershowitz Hit With Accusations Tied To A Conviction And Sex Trafficking Ring

By J.S. Adams, Contributing Writer | Last updated: Apr 24, 2019 - 3:50:20 PM

Attorney Alan Dershowitz, center, speaks as his wife Carolyn Cohen, left, watches during a news interview outside of Manhattan Federal Court March 6, in New York.

MIAMI—A new action was taken in the case of Jeffrey Epstein, a rich financier from West Palm Beach, Fla., who’s been accused of sexually assaulting over 30 under-age girls over a decade ago. But this time, it has to do with his longtime friend, attorney, and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz.

One of Mr. Epstein’s accusers filed a defamation lawsuit against Mr. Dershowitz, accusing him of lying when he was previously accused of having sex with her. The suit alleges that Mr. Dershowitz was Mr. Epstein’s co-conspirator, and that he “was also a participant in sex trafficking, including as one of the men to whom Epstein lent out Plaintiff for sex.”

The accuser and plaintiff is Virginia Roberts Giuffre. She previously said in a federal court affidavit in 2015 that Mr. Epstein forced her to have sex with Mr. Dershowitz when she was 16 years old. It was around the same time when Sarah Ransome, another of Mr. Epstein’s accusers, said that she was recruited and trafficked for sex by Mr. Epstein and his former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, in 2006 and 2007. She also alleged that she was directed to have sex with Alan Dershowitz.

In this July 30, 2008 file photo, Jeffrey Epstein is shown in custody in West Palm Beach, Fla.

Ms. Giuffre’s claims are partially bolstered by an affidavit that was filed by Maria Farmer, which alleges that she was sexually assaulted by Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell in 1996. Ms. Farmer said she reported her assault to New York police and the FBI but said nothing came of it.

The Miami Herald reported that FBI documents released on April 1 indicate that Ms. Farmer was interviewed in 2006 or 2007. But no action was taken against her accusers.

Ms. Farmer said she used to work for Mr. Epstein in his mansion in New York’s Upper East Side. One of her duties was to man the front door and keep records of his visitors. She said many school-age girls would come in and go upstairs. She also said Mr. Dershowitz came and visited Mr. Epstein many times. Ms. Farmer’s affidavit is one of 15 exhibits in Ms. Giuffre’s defamation case against Mr. Dershowitz filed Tuesday, April 16.

In the suit, Virginia L. Giuffre, previously known as Virginia Roberts, said that she was a victim of sex trafficking and abuse by billionaire Jeffrey Epstein over a decade ago and that Dershowitz falsely claimed she had fabricated the accusations, reported NBC News.

“The suit alleges that Dershowitz “was also a participant in sex trafficking, including as one of the men to whom Epstein lent out Plaintiff for sex,” noted nbcnews.com in the April 16 article, “Alan Dershowitz sued for defamation connected to Epstein sex abuse claims.”.

“When Epstein was arrested for sex trafficking in 2006, Dershowitz defended his friend and client by falsely attacking the veracity of his accusers, including calling the children whom Epstein had abused [and, in the case of Plaintiff, the Defendant himself had also abused], liars and prostitutes,” the defamation suit filed by Giuffre says, the article continued.

Mr. Dershowitz has one word to describe Ms. Farmer and Ms. Giuffre— liar. “They are liars, they are perjurers, and I never met them,” he told The Final Call. “The story’s made up.”

Mr. Dershowitz said the accusers never said that he played a part in Mr. Epstein’s game ... until they met their lawyers.

“I have definitive evidence that Ms. Giuffre wrote emails and wrote that the material telling people she never had sex with me. She was pressured into saying it by her lawyers and that’s a quote from her best friends,” he said. He said there was no way Ms. Farmer could have ever seen him visiting Mr. Epstein.

“Farmer says she remembers me coming to Epstein’s house,” he said. “Problem is, she stopped working for him even before I met him. It’s totally made up. All they had to do was check the records of when I met Epstein. By the time I met him, she was living in Ohio. So, she could never have been there.”

Ms. Giuffre’s attorney, Sigrid McCawley, said that “Ms. Giuffre’s complaint is supported by detailed factual allegations, contemporaneous documents and sworn affidavits,” according to NBC News.

“Mr. Dershowitz’s response in court will have to be more than the conclusory denials and ad hominem attacks on victims and their lawyers that continue to be the core of his desperate media strategy,” she told the news outlet.

“I welcome the lawsuit,” Mr. Dershowitz said. “It gives me my first opportunity to prove that these women made up the whole story. That I never met any of them. They made up the stories after being groomed by their lawyers.”

Ms. Giuffre told The Miami Herald, “No sensible person looks forward to litigation. And I know that standing up for myself and others will cause Mr. Dershowitz and Mr. Epstein to redouble their efforts to destroy me and my reputation. But I can no longer sit by and not respond. As my complaint shows, my abusers have sought to conceal their guilt behind a curtain of lies. My complaint calls for the accounting to which I, and their other victims, are entitled.”

If a civil court finds that Mr. Dershowitz has defamed Ms. Giuffre, he will have to pay her for the damages, said Sue-Ann Robinson, a practicing attorney.

“She’s saying that he said something that basically damaged her reputation and that it’s false, so his position is that he’s going to be able to prove that he never even met her,” she said. “The only defense to defamation is truth. So if he can prove that what he says is true, then the lawsuit would be essentially dismissed or she would lose.”

Epstein, Alexander Acosta still facing consequences

Mr. Epstein, 66, was accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls between 2001 and 2006. In 2008, the billionaire got off with 13 months in the county jail. This happened through a plea deal signed by Alexander Acosta, then the U.S. Attorney for Miami and now President Trump’s secretary of labor. The non-prosecution deal allowed Mr. Epstein to plead guilty to lesser charges in the state’s court rather than face federal sex trafficking charges that involved more than 30 underage girls.

His team of lawyers, which included Mr. Dershowitz and Kenneth Starr, tried to paint a negative picture of the girls. They then convinced prosecutors to go easy on him.

In February, a federal judge ruled that Mr. Acosta broke the law by failing to inform Mr. Epstein’s victims of the plea deal, which violates the Crime Victims’ Rights Act. The deal is now being reviewed by the Justice Department, which has also opened a probe into Mr. Acosta’s handling of Mr. Epstein’s case.

After the judge found the plea deal to be illegal, he gave the victims and their attorneys about 15 days to confer and come to a decision about what they’d like to see done to Mr. Epstein. The judge then extended the deadline in early March.

Now, Senate Democrats want the details of the DOJ’s investigation to see if Mr. Acosta is guilty of professional misconduct when handling Mr. Epstein’s deal. However, the department has a policy in which it does not fully disclose its findings to the public. But two democrats in particular, Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) don’t believe that policy should apply to Mr. Acosta.

He was grilled earlier this month at a budget hearing, where he was to testify about the Labor Department’s 2020 budget. Mr. Acosta defended some of the budget cuts, but the cuts concerned lawmakers, especially cuts to programs committed to combating human trafficking. This opened the door for a slew of questions about Mr. Acosta’s involvement with the Epstein case.

A fight by several entities on whether or not to release thousands of pages of documents that could possibly contain evidence against Mr. Epstein, Ms. Maxwell and other alleged co-conspirators ensued in March. Mr. Dershowitz pushed for the documents to be unsealed because he believed it would exonerate him. The Miami Herald reported that the steps towards unsealing the documents were being taken by the courts. Investigations are still ongoing.

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