Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz said his work for convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and false rape accusations should not have prevented him from testifying before the House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearings.
“I did absolutely nothing wrong,” Dershowitz told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday, responding to remarks by Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz that “establishment Republicans” feared his inclusion in the hearings because of his Epstein ties. “I was his lawyer and did nothing wrong in connection with Epstein,” he said.
Dershowitz, 81, was part of the legal team that helped arrange a 2008 plea deal for Epstein, a convicted sex offender who died in jail this year awaiting trial on separate charges. Dershowitz has also been accused of rape by two of Epstein’s accusers.
Gaetz on Monday told listeners to War Room: Impeachment, the Steve Bannon-hosted radio show, that Dershowitz, a noted criminal appellate lawyer and constitutional scholar, would not be called for the first hearing, which will be held Wednesday. “No Alan Dershowitz, no David Rivkin,” Gaetz said, arguing that Republicans were forfeiting the chance to level academic heavyweights against the three left-leaning scholars set to appear.
“I think that was a mistake,” Gaetz said. “I don’t think there is anyone we could put in that chair better than Alan Dershowitz. There’s a decent chance Dershowitz would have been the professor of some of the Democrat witnesses.”
Four constitutional law scholars will testify as witnesses at the first House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday. After weeks gathering evidence, their testimony is expected to frame the allegations against the president of impeachable misconduct. Critics have argued that the 3-1 weighting of the Democratic versus Republican experts disfavors the Right.
Dershowitz would not comment on whether he was in contact with Republican members of the Judiciary Committee. He had not spoken to Gaetz, he said.
“That’s their decision to make. As a citizen, it would be foolish for me” to expect to be called to speak before Congress, Dershowitz said.
In a new book, Guilt by Accusation: The Challenge of Proving Innocence in the Age of #MeToo, Dershowitz rebuts the allegations against him, saying that he is being pilloried unfairly because he secured a plea deal for Epstein that some today view as excessively lenient. “This is McCarthyism pure and simple,” he wrote in August.
Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who worked for Epstein, alleges that, as an underage “sex slave” for Epstein, she was trafficked to Dershowitz and other Epstein friends and acquaintances, among them, Britain’s Prince Andrew, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, former Maine Sen. George Mitchell, and former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak.
A New York court ruled Monday that Epstein’s private communications with Dershowitz could become public. Lawyers for Giuffre said their intent is to prove Dershowitz’s motivations for Epstein’s controversial 2008 plea deal.
Attorney Charles Cooper said they would “seek discovery into Mr. Dershowitz’s attorney-client relationship with Mr. Epstein.” “If Mr. Dershowitz was involved with Mr. Epstein in the activities alleged, his communications with Mr. Epstein, and the motivations Mr. Dershowitz had to negotiate the plea deal that has become so controversial will be relevant and important,” Cooper said.
Further, Giuffre’s attorneys say they will file an amended lawsuit against Dershowitz that cites claims under the Child Victims Act, a recently enacted law that allows victims of childhood sexual abuse to file lawsuits against their abusers even if the statute of limitations has passed.
The complaint will add new libel charges against Dershowitz for claims made about Giuffre in his book and an allegation that Dershowitz violated federal law when he covertly recorded a conversation with attorney David Boies, who previously represented Giuffre.
In the tapes, Dershowitz said, Boies admitted that Giuffre lied about her interactions with Dershowitz.
A second accuser alleged that, like Giuffre, Dershowitz had sex with her. Filed as part of Giuffre’s lawsuit, a third accuser said that she witnessed Dershowitz “on a number of occasions” at Epstein’s New York mansion “going upstairs at the same time there were young girls under the age of 18 who were present upstairs in the house.”
Videos used by Boies and current Giuffre lawyer Stan Pottinger to gain settlements from men accused of having sex with women procured by Epstein show a man with glasses, alleged to be Dershowitz, having sex with a woman. “Look, I’ve had sex with one woman since the day I met Jeffrey Epstein,” Dershowitz has said, in reference to his wife Carolyn Cohen, whom he married in 1986.
“I challenge David Boies to say under oath that he has only had sex with one woman during that period of time. He couldn’t do it,” Dershowitz said. “So, he has an enormous amount of chutzpah to challenge me, and to challenge my perfect, perfect sex life during the relevant period of time.”
