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He started out a yeshiva bocher in Brooklyn, NY; then he graduated first in his class at Yale, and became the youngest tenured professor at Harvard Law School (HLS); he divorced his “plain Jane” Orthodox Jewish wife (in search of a trophy wife in Cambridge) and he managed to get full custody of their two children (unheard of back then, when the mother always got custody); his betrayed and bereft ex-spouse then jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, that then became the eternal skeleton in his closet (Poe’s “tell-tale heart”); in psychic revenge, he then started defending pornographers, spousal murderers and batterers, as well as rapists and other sexual predators (but the Times always dubbed him a “famous civil libertarian”); in the end it all caught up with him because he defended Trump (in order to secure a pardon if he got convicted for sexual assault); woke Harvard Law School and Martha’s Vineyard could abide everything (his lying defense of sexual criminals, his lying defense of Israeli murderers and torturers, his destruction of “little people” who got in his way), but not this! so he became a pariah in respectable woke circles, as Martha Minow stage-managed his “retirement” from Harvard Law School, and David Remnick’s New Yorker bravely ran a hit-piece on him; he’s currently buried in a mountain of lawsuits that will no doubt follow him to his grave, and–isn’t it perfect?–“He’s now mostly retired and lives in Miami.” It’s a cautionary tale in the perils of fame-seeking and the fickleness of woke culture; there are fates worse than laboring away in obscurity.

August 23, 2021

In News

Alan Dershowitz Sues Netflix Over Jeffrey Epstein Documentary

The lawsuit alleges that the producers of the series misled Dershowitz by promising to include evidence that Dershowitz says refutes allegations of his involvement with an alleged Epstein victim.

Lawyer Alan Dershowitz on Wednesday filed a 20 million dollar defamation lawsuit in Miami federal court against Netflix and the producers of “Filthy Rich,” a documentary about Jeffrey Epstein that first aired on the streaming network in March 2020.

Dershowitz, 82, was a member of the legal team that defended Epstein against 2005 allegations that he molested and sexually assaulted dozens of middle and high school girls in Palm Beach.

Among the girls whom the New York financier sexually abused was Virginia Giuffre, a runaway who was recruited into Epstein’s sex trafficking operation in 2000 at the age of 16.

In the four-part series, Guiffre, now 37 and living in Australia, repeated her claim that she was trafficked by Epstein to Dershowitz and a number of other prominent men.

The lawsuit alleges that the producers of the series, Radical Media and its showrunner, Lisa Bryant, misled Dershowitz by promising to include in the series evidence that Dershowitz says he produced to refute Giuffre’s allegations.

Instead, the series’ producers gave greater weight to Giuffre and her lawyers, Dershowitz said, and allowed them to publicly repeat false allegations about him, creating a “he said/she said” story line without presenting his evidence or giving him an opportunity to defend himself.

“It wasn’t a ‘he said/she said’ situation, however, given Professor Dershowitz’s totality of the evidence establishing he never had sex with Giuffre,” the lawsuit says. “To have presented that evidence in ‘Filthy Rich’, as had been promised, would have undercut the credibility” of Giuffre’s lawyers on whose “comments ‘Filthy Rich’ depended upon.”

A spokeswoman for Netflix issued this statement: “Mr. Dershowitz’s lawsuit is without merit, and we will vigorously defend our partners and the series.”

Giuffre and Dershowitz are currently suing each other for defamation in federal court in New York. Dershowitz is also suing CNN in federal court in Miami over the network’s coverage of statements he allegedly made during the impeachment trial of former president Donald Trump, whom Dershowitz represented.

Dershowitz, a constitutional law scholar, author and TV commentator, has been known to represent a number of controversial clients, including O.J. Simpson, Harvey Weinstein, Patty Hearst and Mike Tyson. He’s now mostly retired and lives in Miami, according to the lawsuit.

Dershowitz said he met Epstein in 1996 and began representing him in 2005, when the eccentric multimillionaire was accused of trafficking minors in Palm Beach.

Epstein hired a number of high-profile lawyers, including Kenneth Starr and Roy Black, who helped him negotiate an unprecedented plea deal in 2008.

Under the agreement, which was kept secret from his victims, Epstein and his co-conspirators (some of whom were never identified) received federal immunity, and in exchange, Epstein was allowed to plead guilty to two state prostitution charges and serve 18 months in Palm Beach county jail.

Within months of being sentenced, however, he was allowed out on work release, and he subsequently spent most of his term in an office in downtown West Palm Beach.

The case has led to two federal investigations and the resignation of Trump’s former labor secretary, Alexander Acosta, the U.S. attorney in Miami who signed off on the deal.

It also a revealed multiple failures and imbalances in a criminal justice system that often favors wealthy, well-connected defendants.

In July 2019, Epstein, 65, was indicted for sex trafficking minors in the Southern District of New York. He was found hanging in his cell a month later. His death was ruled a suicide.