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Case 1:19-cv-03377 Document 1 Filed 04/16/19 Page 1 of 28
United States District Court
Southern District of New York
VIRGINIA L. GIUFFRE,
Plaintiff,
CASE NO:
v.
ALAN DERSHOWITZ,
Defendant.
________________________ /
COMPLAINT
Boies Schiller Flexner LLP
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Plaintiff, VIRGINIA L. GIUFFRE, formerly known as Virginia Roberts (“Roberts”), for
her Complaint against Defendant, Alan Dershowitz (“Dershowitz”) avers upon personal
knowledge as to her own acts and status and upon information and belief and to all other matters:
NATURE OF THE ACTION
1. This suit arises out of Defendant’s defamatory statements of and concerning
Plaintiff.
2. During 2000-2002, beginning when Plaintiff was 16, Plaintiff was the victim of
sex trafficking and abuse by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
3. Epstein’s trafficking scheme involved recruiting young girls, often by claiming
they would be paid $200 for simply providing a massage to a wealthy billionaire. The young girl
would then be brought up to Epstein’s bedroom where Epstein would be on a massage table;
Epstein would then sexually abuse the girl. This same pattern was repeated numerous times with
numerous children.
4. “From between 1999 – 2007, Jeffrey Epstein sexually abused more than 30 minor
girls…in his mansion in Palm Beach Florida, and elsewhere in the United States and overseas…
In addition to his own sexual abuse of the victims, Epstein directed other persons to abuse the
girls sexually. Epstein used paid employees to find and bring minor girls to him. Epstein
worked in concert with others to obtain minors not only for his sexual gratification, but also for
the sexual gratification of others.” United States District Court Judge Marra February 21, 2016
Summary Judgement Order at 2, Case No.: 9:08-cv-80786 (internal citations omitted). One of
the persons with whom Epstein acted in concert was Dershowitz.
5. Like other minor children who came before and after her, Plaintiff was initially
recruited to provide massages, and thereafter to engage in a variety of sexual acts, for Epstein.
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Plaintiff was required to be on call for Epstein for sexual purposes and frequently traveled with
him both nationally and internationally. Plaintiff was regularly abused by Epstein and was lent
out by Epstein to others for sexual purposes.
6. Defendant Dershowitz was Epstein’s attorney, close friend, and co-conspirator.
Dershowitz was also a participant in sex trafficking, including as one of the men to whom
Epstein lent out Plaintiff for sex.
7. 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.
8. Despite his significant criminal activity, Epstein’s criminal charges were resolved
by a guilty plea to a single Florida state law charge and a non-prosecution agreement (a “NPA”)
with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. Unknown to the public and the
victims at the time, Epstein’s lawyers, including Dershowitz, were pressuring the Government to
commit to the NPA without informing the victims. Epstein’s multiple victims, including
Roberts, were kept in the dark and told to be “patient” while Dershowitz participated in the
drafting of the NPA and worked to protect Epstein and other “potential co-conspirators”
(including himself) from prosecution.
9. On July 7, 2008, a challenge to the NPA was brought on behalf of two of
Epstein’s victims (not including Plaintiff) based on the fact that, contrary to the requirements of
the Criminal Victims’ Rights Act (the “CVRA”), the NPA had been concealed from Epstein’s
victims.
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10. In December 2014, Roberts, who had not initially been part of the CVRA action,
was asked to, and did, provide information to Plaintiffs’ counsel in the CVRA case in which she
discussed her sex trafficking by Epstein. On December 31, 2014, Plaintiff’s counsel in the
CVRA proceeding (Brad Edwards and Paul Cassell) filed a Motion Pursuant to Rule 21 for
Joinder in the Action (“Joinder Motion”) on behalf of Roberts. Ms. Roberts’s joinder motion
described how she had been sexually trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein and was forced to have sex
with, among others, Alan Dershowitz.
11. Based on Plaintiff’s December 2014 filing, Dershowitz, as he had previously done
to Epstein’s victims, publically and viciously attacked plaintiff’s counsel in the CVRA actions,
Brad Edwards and Paul Cassell. Dershowitz, in nationally televised news interviews, wrongfully
claimed that Edwards and Cassell had engaged in unethical behavior warranting disbarment for
filing the Joinder Motion that described Dershowitz’s involvement with Epstein and Roberts.
Edwards, who is a prominent attorney for sexually abused women and children, and Cassell who
is a former United States District Court judge who left the bench to advocate for criminal
victims, sued Dershowitz for defamation. Edwards and Cassell asserted that the factual
allegations that Dershowitz had knowledge of and participated in Epstein’s criminal conduct
were entirely proper and well founded and that Dershowitz’s statements about Edwards and
Cassell were defamatory.
12. In April 2016 Dershowitz settled the Edwards and Cassell defamation claims
against him. As a condition of the settlement, Dershowitz required that the financial terms of the
settlement be kept confidential.
13. In November 2018, after conducting a lengthy investigation that involved
interviewing over eighty (80) women, the Miami Herald published the first in a series of articles
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exposing how Epstein and his lawyers had corrupted the legal system to obtain the NPA and
referring to Dershowitz’s sexual abuse of Roberts. Dershowitz’s response on behalf of himself
and his client and co-conspirator Epstein has been a desperate barrage of false and increasingly
defamatory attacks on Roberts. The purpose and effect of these attacks has been to damage
Robert’s reputation and credibility and to try to intimidate her into silence.
14. Defendant’s central assertion is that Roberts has committed perjury, and that in
December 2014, Roberts and her attorneys hatched a scheme to falsely accuse Dershowitz of sex
trafficking as part of a criminal attempt to extort a settlement from another party.
15. As Defendant and Epstein well knew, Dershowitz’s assertion was false.
Dershowitz and Epstein knew that Dershowitz had in fact had sex with Plaintiff. Dershowitz and
Epstein also knew that Roberts’s assertions about Dershowitz were not part of any criminal
extortion plot. Indeed, Dershowitz and Epstein knew that Roberts had identified Dershowitz as a
sexual predator years before December 2014.
16. Defendant’s knowledge of the falsity of his attacks on Roberts have not, however,
limited the scope or scale of those attacks.
17. Examples of Dershowitz’s knowingly false and malicious defamatory statements
made on behalf of himself and Epstein are:
(a)
November 28, 2018: “the story was 100% flatly categorically made up” and
“Roberts and her attorneys fabricated the assertion in order to get money from other
powerful, wealthy people”. (Exhibit 1, p. 8).
(b)
December 1, 2018: “I never met Roberts; I never had sex with her; she
simply made up the entire story for money”. (Exhibit 2).
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(c)
December 2, 2018: “I was ‘deliberately framed for financial reasons’”;
Roberts made her claims about Dershowitz “in order to obtain money from a
wealthy businessman and that Roberts had never previously included me among
the people with whom she claimed to have had sex”; “one of Roberts’ own lawyers
has acknowledged in front of witnesses that Roberts claims against me are ‘wrong’
‘simply wrong’”; “I never met Roberts; I never had sex with her; she simply made
up the entire story for money”. (Exhibit 3).
(d)
December 4, 2018: Plaintiff is a “certified, complete, total liar”; “I can prove
conclusively that she made the whole thing up”. At the same time Dershowitz
claimed “that the FBI recognized the evidence showed he was not where she said
he was”. (Exhibit 4).
(e)
December 5, 2018: “Roberts made up the accusations out of whole cloth in
order to obtain millions of dollars from Leslie Wexner” and “there is evidence that
directly proves I was framed. These include emails between Roberts and a
journalist, a book manuscript by Roberts and a legal brief that are smoking guns
showing that I was deliberately framed for financial reasons.” (Exhibit 5).
(f)
March 2, 2019: “My perjuring accusers are Virginia Roberts and Sarah
Ransome [who reported that Epstein lent her out to Dershowitz for sex at the same
time as Dershowitz was, at Epstein’s request, representing Ransome as her lawyer].
Both have long records of lying”. (Exhibit 6).
18. Dershowitz and Epstein knew Dershowitz’s assertions about Roberts, including
his assertions referenced in paragraph 17 above, were, and would be taken by persons who read
and heard them to be, specific statements of fact.
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19. Dershowitz has repeatedly, publically claimed that he wanted to have a trial that
would determine the facts concerning his conduct. He said on national television that he would
waive the statute of limitations so that Roberts could sue him for sex abuse. However, when
Robert’s counsel asked Dershowitz to do so, Dershowitz refused -- and continues to refuse.
20. Similarly, when Dershowitz was faced with an actual case brought by Edwards
and Cassell which would have determined the veracity of Roberts’ claims, Dershowitz settled to
avoid that determination.
21. More recently, Dershowitz, perhaps believing that Roberts who is now living with
her husband and children in Australia would not be prepared to engage in litigation, has again
taken to claiming publically that he demands a trial on the question of whether Roberts
committed perjury and made up her statements about him for money. For example on March 2,
2019: My “accusers are Virginia Roberts and Sarah Ransome…I hereby accuse my false
accusers of committing the felony of perjury and challenge them to sue me for defamation.”
(Exhibit 6).
22. Mr. Dershowitz now has what he claims to have been looking for.
JURISDICTION AND VENUE
23. This is an action for damages in an amount in excess of the minimum
jurisdictional limits of this Court.
24. This Court has jurisdiction over this dispute pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §1332
(diversity jurisdiction) in that Roberts and Dershowitz are citizens of different states and the
amount in controversy exceeds seventy-five thousand ($75,000), exclusive of interest and costs.
25. This Court has personal jurisdiction over Defendant. Defendant resides in New
York City; Defendant conducts regular business in New York City; and this action arose,
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defamatory statements were made, and abuse occurred, within the Southern District of New
York.
26. Venue is proper in this Court as (a) the cause of action arose within the
jurisdiction of this Court and (b) Defendant resides within this District.
PARTIES
27. Plaintiff is an individual who is a citizen of the State of Florida and a resident of
Australia.
28. Defendant Dershowitz is an individual who resides in the Southern District of
New York at 2 Tudor City Place Apt. 10EN, New York, New York 10017.
29. Jeffrey Epstein is an individual who resides in the Southern District of New York
at 9 East 71 st Street, New York, New York, 10021.
FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS
A. Epstein’s Sex Trafficking Enterprise
30. Plaintiff became a victim of sex trafficking and repeated sexual abuse after being
recruited by Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein when Plaintiff was under the age of
eighteen.
31. Between 2000 and 2002, Epstein sexually abused Roberts at numerous locations
including his mansions in West Palm Beach, Florida, New Mexico, the Virgin Islands, and this
District. Epstein also flew Roberts on his plane nationally and internationally numerous times
when she was under the age of 18. Only portions of the flight logs of Epstein’s private planes
are yet known, and Epstein also flew Roberts frequently on commercial airlines to meet him and
others. However, the chart below which shows Roberts’ flights on Epstein’s private plane from
the limited logs that are available illustrates the international scope of Epstein’s sex trafficking.
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32. Between 1999 and 2007, with the assistance of numerous co-conspirators, Epstein
abused more than thirty (30) minor underage girls, a fact confirmed by state and federal law
enforcement.
33. After years of abuse, Epstein sent Roberts to Thailand in September 2002. One of
Roberts’ assignments from Epstein was to bring a young girl back to Epstein in the United
States. Fearing for her life, and not wanting to subject another young girl to the abuse she was
forced to endure, Roberts fled from Thailand to Australia to escape from Epstein.
B. Dershowitz’s Role with Epstein and Abuse of Plaintiff
34. Dershowitz has been “a close friend of Mr. Epstein” for many years. (Exhibit 7).
In 2003, Dershowitz said “I’m on my 20 th book… The only person outside of my immediate
family that I send drafts to is Jeffrey.” “The Talented Mr. Epstein.” Vanity Fair 2003. (Exhibit
8). Dershowitz also described Epstein as his friend “I would be interested in him [Epstein] as a
friend if we had hamburgers on the boardwalk in Coney Island and talked about his ideas.”
“Vanity Fair Reminds US When Jeffrey Epstein Wasn’t a Creep.” The Atlantic Wire. June 21,
2011. Dershowitz frequently traveled with Epstein, including on Epstein’s private plane. In
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addition, Epstein’s employees have confirmed that Dershowitz visited Epstein’s Palm Beach and
New York City mansions often, would stay overnight, and was present when the victims of
Epstein’s sex trafficking were there. Dershowitz also visited Epstein’s other homes.
35. In addition to their close friendship, Dershowitz represented Epstein as his
attorney. On or about December 2, 2018, Dershowitz stated that he is still Epstein’s attorney
(Exhibit 9).
36. During the time period that Roberts was being trafficked by Epstein she was
forced to have sex with Alan Dershowitz. Roberts was forced to engage in sexual acts with
Dershowitz in, among other locations, Epstein’s mansion located at 9 East 71 st Street, New York,
New York 10021.
C. The Arrest and Prosecution of Epstein
37. Epstein ultimately pled guilty to procuring a minor for prostitution, and is now a
registered sex offender.
38. In September 2007, Epstein entered into a Non-Prosecution Agreement (“NPA”)
in which the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida agreed not to prosecute Epstein
for numerous federal sex crimes committed in that District.
39. In the NPA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida
additionally agreed that it would not institute any federal criminal charges against any potential
co-conspirators of Epstein.
40. Epstein flippantly referred to his sexual abuse of multiple minors, and the slap on
the wrist he had received for it, in a 2011 interview with the New York Post: “Billionaire pervert
Jeffrey Epstein is back in New York City – and making wisecracks about his just-ended jail stint
for having sex with an underage girl. ‘I am not a sexual predator, I’m an “offender,”’ the
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financier told The Post yesterday. “‘It’s the difference between a murderer and a person who
steals a bagel,’ said Epstein.” February 25, 2011, New York Post “Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein:
I’m a Sex Offender Not A Predator”.
D. The Criminal Victims’ Rights Act Proceeding
41. Rather than confer with the victims about the NPA, the U.S. Attorney’s Office
and Epstein, who was represented by Dershowitz at that time, agreed to a “confidentiality”
provision in the Agreement barring its disclosure to anyone—including Epstein’s victims. As a
consequence, the victims were not told about the NPA.
42. On July 7, 2008, a young woman identified as Jane Doe No. 1, one of Jeffrey
Epstein’s victims (other than Roberts), filed a petition to enforce her rights under the Crime
Victims’ Rights Act (“CVRA”), 18 U.S.C. ¶ 3771, alleging that the Government failed to
provide her the rights promised in the CVRA with regard to the plea arrangement with Epstein.
43. On February 21, 2019, the Court found that the victims’ rights had been violated
and granted summary judgment in favor of the victims finding: “It was a material omission for
the Government to suggest to the victims that they have patience relative to an investigation
about which it had already bound itself not to prosecute.” Order at 31. In its Order the Court
acknowledged that: “Jeffrey Epstein sexually abused more than 30 minor girls”. The Court also
found: “Among other provisions, the NPA expanded immunity to any ‘potential coconspirator’
of Epstein’s: ‘In consideration of Epstein’s agreement to plead guilty and to provide
compensation in the manner described above, if Epstein successfully fulfills all of the terms and
conditions of this agreement, the United States also agrees that it will not institute any criminal
charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein, including but not limited to Sarah
Kellen, Adriana Ross, Lesley Groff or Nadia Marcinkova… From the time the FBI began
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investigating Epstein until September 24, 2007 – when the NPA was concluded – the Office
never conferred with the victims about a NPA or told the victims that such an agreement was
under consideration.” Order at 2, 8.
E. Victims Refuse Silence
44. Ultimately, as a mother and one of Epstein’s many victims, Roberts concluded
that she should speak out about her sexual abuse experiences in hopes of helping others who had
also suffered from sexual trafficking and abuse, and of possibly protecting future potential
victims.
45. On December 23, 2014, Roberts incorporated an organization called Victims
Refuse Silence, Inc., a Florida not-for-profit corporation.
46. Roberts intended Victims Refuse Silence to change and improve the fight against
sexual abuse and human trafficking. The goal of her organization was, and continues to be, to
help survivors surmount the shame, silence, and intimidation typically experienced by victims of
sexual abuse, and to help others to escape becoming victims of sex trafficking.
F. Defendant Acted Maliciously to Defame, Discredit, and Intimidate Roberts
47. Dershowitz made his false and defamatory statements as set forth above on behalf
of himself and on behalf of his co-conspirator and client Epstein, in the Southern District of New
York and elsewhere, in a deliberate effort to maliciously discredit Roberts and silence her efforts
to expose the sexual abuse she suffered. Dershowitz and Epstein did so with the purpose and
effect of having others repeat such false and defamatory statements and thereby further
damaged Roberts’s reputation. Dershowitz and Epstein knew Dershowitz’s statements were
false.
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48. Dershowitz made his statements to discredit Roberts in concert with Epstein and
others, including Ghislaine Maxwell, one of Epstein’s long-time procurers, as part of a
conspiracy to discredit and try to silence Roberts. Epstein was particularly interested in
discrediting and silencing Roberts because he feared a reopening of a federal criminal
investigation of him.
49. Dershowitz made his statements pursuant to his conspiracy with Epstein and
Maxwell maliciously as part of an effort to conceal sex trafficking crimes committed around the
world by Epstein and other powerful persons.
50. Dershowitz and Epstein intended Dershowitz’s false and defamatory statements
set out above to be broadcast around the world and to intimidate and silence Roberts from
making further efforts to expose sex crimes committed by Epstein and other powerful persons,
including Dershowitz.
51. Dershowitz and Epstein intended their false statements to be specific statements
of fact. Dershowitz’s false statements were, as he and Epstein intended, broadcast around the
world and were reasonably understood by those who heard them to be specific factual claims by
Dershowitz that he had not had sex with Roberts, that Roberts was intentionally lying about
having sex with Dershowitz, that Roberts committed the crime of perjury, that Roberts had
committed the crime of extortion, and that Roberts had intentionally fabricated her assertions
about Dershowitz to extort money from others.
52. Epstein also worked with other of his attorneys to attack Roberts’ allegations,
including in a false statement they made in a letter to the editor to the New York Times asserting:
“The number of young women involved in the investigation has been vastly exaggerated, there
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was no ‘international sex-trafficking operation’ and there was never evidence that Mr. Epstein
‘hosted sex parties’ at his home”. (Exhibit 10).
G. Dershowitz’s Lies
53. From the beginning, Dershowitz and Epstein have sought to hide their crimes
behind a curtain of lies. In response to Roberts’ description of Dershowitz’s participation in
Epstein’s sex trafficking, Dershowitz began a series of intentional, outright lies designed to
distance himself from Epstein, to cover up his own wrongdoing, and to discredit Roberts and
intimidate her into silence.
54. Dershowitz’s repeated lies are compelling evidence both of his lack of credibility
and his guilt. Only a person seeking to conceal improper conduct would have engaged in the
pattern of lies which has characterized Dershowitz’s statements since his sex trafficking was
revealed.
55. In attempt to conceal his relationship with Epstein, Dershowitz in January 2015
asserted that “my relationship with him was entirely professional. It is a total bum rap to say that
I…was ‘chummy’ with him”. (Exhibit 11). That was a lie, as Dershowitz and Epstein knew (see,
e.g., paragraphs 34-35).
56. Both to conceal Dershowitz’s relationship with Epstein, and to discredit Roberts,
Dershowitz has repeatedly asserted that he was only at Epstein’s residence once in Palm Beach,
and that was with his family. However, Juan Alessi, a long time Epstein household employee,
has confirmed that Dershowitz visited Epstein “pretty often. I would say at least four or five
times a year” and that he would “typically” stay two or three days. Similarly, Alfredo Rodriguez
who worked for Epstein approximately only six months confirmed that during that six months
period Dershowitz visited Epstein twice.
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57. Again, both to conceal his relationship with Epstein and to discredit Roberts,
Dershowitz has repeatedly asserted that he was never in Epstein’s residence in the presence of
young women. As both Dershowitz and Epstein know, that assertion was also false. As Mr.
Rodriguez has confirmed, there were “also young ladies in the house at the time he [Dershowitz]
was there”. Mr. Rodriguez also confirmed that “Mr. Dershowitz was there” when “women came
to Mr. Epstein’s home to give a massage”. Mr. Rodriguez also confirmed that “Alan Dershowitz
was at the house” with “the local Palm Beach girls” who he was “told to call masseuses”,
although he did not himself know whether or not Dershowitz personally received a massage.
58. Maria Farmer was an employee of Epstein responsible for “manning the front
door at his New York mansion and keeping records of people who came to the home” (Exhibit
12, ¶ 2).
(a)
Ms. Farmer “witnessed a number of school age girls coming to the house,
some of the young girls would be wearing their school uniforms”…who “then
would be escorted upstairs” (Exhibit 12, ¶ 3).
(b)
Ms. Farmer was told these young girls “were interviewing for modeling
positions” even though “it did not seem credible to me that these young girls were
interviewing for modeling positions”. (Exhibit 12, ¶ 3).
59. Ms. Farmer asserts that “Alan Dershowitz was an individual who came to visit
Epstein at his New York mansion a number of times when I was working for Epstein.
Dershowitz was very comfortable at the home and would come in and walk upstairs. On a
number of occasions I witnessed Dershowitz at the NY mansion going upstairs at the same time
there were young girls under the age of 18 who were present upstairs in the house” (Exhibit 12, ¶
4).
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60. Ms. Farmer, like other victims of, and witnesses to, Epstein and Dershowitz’s sex
trafficking and abuse has been subjected to attacks and intimidations. (Exhibit 12, ¶¶ 8-9). Her
courageous testimony, together with the sworn testimony of victims such as Sarah Ransome and
witnesses such as Mr. Alessi and Mr. Rodriguez , proves beyond any doubt that Dershowitz’s
claims that he was never present where Ms. Roberts was trafficked, and never in the presence of
young girls, are a lie intended to cover up his culpability.
61. Again both to conceal his relationship with Epstein and to discredit Roberts,
Dershowitz has repeatedly asserted that he has records that prove that it would have been
“impossible” for him to be with Roberts because he was never in the same place and time as
Roberts. As both Dershowitz and Epstein know, that too was a lie. The testimony of Epstein’s
household staff establishes that Dershowitz was repeatedly at Epstein’s residence. Even
Dershowitz’s own selected, incomplete, and apparently revised, records demonstrate that
Dershowitz was present at locations where Ms. Roberts was with Epstein.
62. Dershowitz’s assertion that Roberts accused him of having sex with her only after
her lawyers convinced her to do so in late 2014 is not only false, as both Dershowitz and Epstein
knew, but thoroughly disproved by the record.
63. Roberts had identified Dershowitz as a participant in her sexual abuse at the time
it occurred. She did so again in 2009. In 2010 Epstein’s co-conspirators were repeatedly asked
about Dershowitz. For example:
(a)
Adriana Ross refused to answer on Fifth Amendment grounds whether
“Alan Dershowitz stays at Jeffrey Epstein’s house…when underage minor
females have been in the bedroom with Jeffrey Epstein”.
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(b)
Nadia Marcinkova refused to answer on Fifth Amendment grounds:
“Alan Dershowitz is also somebody that you also know to have been at the house
when L.M. was being sexually abused in Jeffrey Epstein’s bedroom, correct?”
64. In 2011 Counsel for Edwards wrote Dershowitz:
(a)
On August 23, 2011: “We…have reason to believe that you have
personally observed Jeffrey Epstein in the presence of underage females”.
(b)
On September 7, 2011: “Multiple individuals have placed you in the
presence of Jeffrey Epstein on multiple occasions and in various locations when
Jeffrey Epstein was in the company of underage females subsequently identified
as victims of Mr. Epstein’s criminal molestations.”
65. Dershowitz lied and stated that he had never flown on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane
with a young woman and always flew with his wife. (Hala Gorani, CNN Live, Jan. 5, 2015).
However, even the limited publically available flight logs of Jeffrey Epstein’s private plane
demonstrate that Dershowitz flew often on Epstein’s planes without his wife; with young
women, including a Victoria’s Secret model; Epstein’s procurer Ghislaine Maxwell; and Sarah
Kellen who was identified by the Government as Epstein’s co-conspirator in his sex trafficking.
66. Dershowitz also lied by saying that he “never” got a massage from anybody: “I
never got a massage from anybody. It’s made up out of whole cloth.” (NY Daily News, January
21, 2015). However, after it was revealed that Epstein’s household staff identified Dershowitz as
one of the recipients of “massages” at Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion, Dershowitz changed his
story and admitted he got a massage at Epstein’s Palm Beach home but claimed: “I kept my
underwear on during the massage.” (Local 10, January 22, 2015).
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67. Dershowitz lied and said he never saw any naked pictures of females in Epstein’s
Palm Beach home during his many visits, yet the police footage that was obtained from the
search of Epstein’s home proves that there were naked pictures of females throughout the home
including in the common areas.
68. In a desperate attempt to deflect attention from his own misconduct, Dershowitz
fabricated an extortion plot by Roberts and her lawyers. Dershowitz falsely told the media that
he was being used as a pawn as part of a fanciful plan to extort money from a billionaire business
mogul and colleague of Epstein. Dershowitz’s claim was that he was framed in order to send a
message to the billionaire that this is what would happen to the billionaire if the billionaire did
not pay Roberts and her attorneys. As Dershowitz knew:
(a)
(b)
(c)
No complaint was ever made against the billionaire.
No money was either paid or demanded by or from the billionaire.
Roberts’ assertions about Dershowitz long predated the time of the alleged
extortion plot.
69. Dershowitz also falsely claimed that Roberts’ lawyer had told him that he had
concluded that Roberts was “wrong” and “simply wrong” in accusing Dershowitz. Dershowitz,
in violation of the canons of ethics and in at least one case in violation of state law, had
surreptitiously tape recorded confidential settlement negotiations he had engaged in with Ms.
Roberts’ lawyer. Dershowitz then played and described excerpts from those tapes out of context
to reporters to try to make it appear that Ms. Roberts’ lawyer’s hypothetical comments, and
characterizations of Dershowitz’s assertions, represented that lawyer’s conclusions. As the sworn
testimony (Exhibit 13) of Dershowitz’s own lawyer, and the facts set forth below, demonstrate,
Dershowitz’s assertions about what Ms. Roberts’ lawyer said are, again, false.
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70. In May 2015 Dershowitz requested confidential settlement negotiations with Ms.
Roberts’ lawyers in which Dershowitz sought to convince Ms. Roberts lawyer that Ms. Roberts
was mistaken, and that the person to whom Epstein had lent Ms. Roberts was Nathan Myhrvold,
not Dershowitz. Dershowitz claimed that he had been at Epstein’s home only once (and that he
was there with his family); that he had never been in the vicinity of Epstein’s island; that he had
not been at Epstein’s New York mansion; and that he had been at Epstein’s New Mexico ranch
only once for a few hours (again with his family). Dershowitz provided a summary of his
whereabouts that purported to prove that his assertions were true.
71. Dershowitz was told that, based on what was shown in his summary, it would
have been impossible for Ms. Roberts’ assertions about him to be true, and that if his assertions
proved out, Ms. Roberts counsel would undertake to convince her that she must have made a
mistake.
(a)
Dershowitz was also told, however, (i) that his assertions would have to be
proven, (ii) that Ms. Roberts had always been very clear that she recalled having
had sex with Dershowitz multiple times, and (iii) that everyone was convinced
that Ms. Roberts was telling the truth as she recalled it.
(b)
Dershowitz responded that he did not doubt that Ms. Roberts was telling
the truth as she recalled it and that she would have no difficulty passing a lie
detector test. He said he simply believed Ms. Roberts had made an honest mistake
in confusing him with Nathan Myhrvold.
72. Following Dershowitz’ presentations, Dershowitz’s representations were
investigated and repeatedly proven false.
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(a)
Dershowitz’s alleged backup for his travel summary proved to be
incomplete and in some instances apparently altered.
(b)
Dershowitz’s key claim that he had not stayed at Epstein’s house was
proven false, including by the testimony of Epstein’s household employees Juan
Alessi (see ¶ 56 above) and Alfredo Rodriguez (see ¶¶ 56-57 above) as well as the
testimony of Sarah Ransome (Exhibit 14) and Maria Farmer (Exhibit 12).
(c)
Dershowitz’s claim that Ms. Roberts confused him with Nathan Myhrvold
was tested by showing Ms. Roberts pictures of both. She was, and is, clear that it
was Dershowitz, not Myhrvold, with whom she had sex.
(d)
Dershowitz’s claim he had never been on Epstein’s plane without his wife
was proven false by plane logs.
(e)
Dershowitz’s claim that he had never seen pictures of young females at
Epstein’s house was proven false by Palm Beach police and FBI reports.
(f)
Dershowitz’s claim that he had never been in the presence of young
females was proven false by the testimony of Epstein’s household employer (see
¶¶56-57) and of young women themselves (see Exhibit 14 [Ransome] and Exhibit
12 [Farmer].)
73. After Dershowitz’s claimed proof of exonerating evidence collapsed, and the
evidence of his guilt grew, Roberts’ lawyer’s told Dershowitz in writing that they “had
discovered evidence inconsistent with some of [your] representations”, that his travel “records
were incomplete”, and that he “should have settled the case when he had a chance”.
74. Roberts’ lawyer explicitly told Dershowitz that neither Roberts nor her lawyer
would make any statement saying or implying that Roberts was mistaken in her charge that
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Dershowitz participated in her sexual trafficking and abuse. In his public statements, Dershowitz
conspicuously omits any reference to the statements by Roberts’ lawyers after they had
investigated his representations and concluded that they were false.
75. Faced with the mounting evidence of his guilt, Dershowitz abandoned his attempt
to get Roberts or her lawyer to concede a mistake or that Roberts had been wrong, and
desperately sought even a suggestion that an error was “possible”.
76. In December 2015 Ms. Roberts’ counsel again told Mr. Dershowitz that “Virginia
is adamant about her current recollection” and that neither Ms. Roberts nor her counsel believed
she was mistaken in identifying Mr. Dershowitz as one of the men to whom Epstein had lent her
out for sex. In response, Mr. Dershowitz did not claim that Ms. Roberts lawyers had told him
that they did not believe her.
77. Instead, the morning of December 9, 2015, Mr. Dershowitz pleaded: “David,
Have we given up on a mutually acceptable statement from VR or you. Let’s keep trying. We are
not that far apart.” (Exhibit 15). When Ms. Roberts lawyer did not immediately respond, Mr.
Dershowitz wrote later the same day:
“We should be aiming at a short simple statement such as: “The
events at issue occurred approximately 15 years ago when I was a
teenager. Although I believed then and continued to believe that AD
was the person with whom I had sex, recent developments raise the
possibility that this may be a case of mistaken identification.”
(Exhibit 15).
Mr. Dershowitz went on to write: “It would be acceptable if the statement came from you rather
than her, if she prefers.” (Id.)
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78. Wholly absent at this point was any assertion by Mr. Dershowitz that Ms. Roberts
was lying, or that she made up her charge as part of an extortion claim, or that after investigating
his alleged evidence Ms. Roberts’ lawyer did not believe her. On the contrary, Mr. Dershowitz
expressly recognized that Ms. Roberts’ belief was an honest one. All Mr. Dershowitz was
pleading for was an acknowledgement that there was a “possibility” that there “may be” a case of
mistaken identification. Even that plea was rejected by Ms. Roberts and her lawyers as
misleading.
79. Dershowitz’s present PR claim that Roberts’ lawyers disbelieved their client, and
that Roberts intentionally committed perjury as part of an extortion scheme, is just another
Dershowitz lie. His reliance on statements taken out of context, his failure to include the
statements of Roberts’ lawyer after Dershowitz’s supposed evidence had been investigated, and
the damning admissions of his own lawyers, reveal Dershowitz’s total lack of support for his
allegation that Roberts and her lawyers concocted knowingly false allegation against him as part
of a supposed extortion plot.
80. Dershowitz also lied to attempt to deflect Sarah Ransome’s revelations about him.
Ms. Ransome revealed that during the time she was a victim of Epstein’s sex trafficking,
Epstein’s arranged for his lawyer, Dershowitz, to also represent Ms. Ransome. Ms. Ransome
also described how, during the time Dershowitz was her lawyer, Epstein lent her out to
Dershowitz for sex. (Exhibit 14).
81. Dershowitz asserted that he never had sex with Ms. Ransome, that he never
represented Ms. Ransome, that he did not even know Ms. Ransome, and that Ms. Ransome’s
statements about him were fabricated by Ms. Roberts’ lawyer in retaliation for a bar complaint
that Dershowitz had filed against that lawyer (Exhibit 16). However, as Dershowitz knew:
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(a)
(b)
(c)
He did have sex with Ms. Ransome.
He was Ms. Ransome’s lawyer.
Ms. Ransome’s statements about her involvement with Dershowitz
preceded any contact with Roberts’ attorneys. For example, Ransome’s first
contact with any of Roberts’ lawyers was in November 2016, and at least as early
as October 2016 Ransome had identified Dershowitz in writing to a reporter as
someone who had had sex with one or more of the girls provided by Epstein and
that Epstein had arranged for Dershowitz to be Ransome’s lawyer.
82. After settling the case against him brought by Messrs. Edwards and Cassell,
Dershowitz told the media he had been vindicated, while at the same time insisting that the term
of the settlement remains confidential. Edwards and Cassell responded: “Following the
announcement of the settlement of defamation claims against Alan Dershowitz, he has been
making public statements suggesting that he has prevailed in the lawsuit and that the terms of the
settlement exonerate him of any wrongdoing. Those statements are at best misleading. It is a
mistake for anyone to conclude based upon Mr. Dershowitz’s statements that the case against
him was abandoned due to lack of factual support. It is a mistake for anyone to conclude based
upon Dershowitz’s statements that Bradley Edwards and Paul Cassell had determined that the
allegations against Alan Dershowitz made by Virginia Roberts Giuffre were false or unfounded.
Neither the terms of settlement nor the agreed upon joint public statement issued as part of the
settlement support any such conclusion and it is false to state or suggest otherwise.” Dershowitz
Settles Sex Case, But is He Vindicated? The American Lawyer, April 10, 2016.
83. Dershowitz continues to this day to insist that the terms of his settlement with
Edwards and Cassell remain confidential -- a position that can only be explained by
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Dershowitz’s knowledge that revealing how much he had paid to avoid a trial of the allegations
against him would reveal his guilt.
84. As described above, Dershowitz has also repeatedly asserted that he wanted to
have a trial to establish his innocence. By contrast, he paid to settle the case that would have
provided that trial. He even lied about his being willing to waive the statute of limitations so that
Roberts could sue him for sex abuse -- a lie almost immediately exposed when he was promptly
asked to do so and, equally promptly refused.
COUNT I DEFAMATION
85. Plaintiff Roberts re-alleges paragraphs 1 – 84 as if the same were fully set forth
herein. Dershowitz made his false and defamatory statements deliberately and maliciously with
the intent to intimidate, discredit and defame Roberts.
86. In December 2018, and thereafter, Dershowitz, on behalf of himself and Epstein,
intentionally and maliciously released to the press his false statements about Roberts in an
attempt to destroy Roberts’ reputation and brand her as a liar and cause her to lose all credibility
in her efforts to help victims of sex trafficking.
87. Dershowitz and Epstein knew that Dershowitz’s assertions would dilute, discredit,
and neutralize Roberts’s public and private messages to sexual abuse victims and ultimately
prevent Roberts from effectively providing assistance and advocacy on behalf of other victims of
sex trafficking, or expose her abusers.
88. Using his role as a powerful lawyer with powerful friends, Dershowitz’s
statements were published internationally for the malicious purpose of further damaging a sexual
abuse and sexual trafficking victim; to destroy Roberts’s reputation and credibility; to cause the
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world to disbelieve Roberts; and to destroy Roberts’s efforts to use her experience to help others
suffering as sex trafficking victims.
89. Dershowitz, personally, intentionally, and maliciously made false and damaging
statements of fact concerning Roberts, as detailed above, in the Southern District of New York
and elsewhere.
90. The false statements that Dershowitz made, personally on behalf of himself and
Epstein not only called Roberts’s truthfulness and integrity into question, but also exposed
Roberts to public hatred, contempt, ridicule, and disgrace.
91. At the time Dershowitz made his false statements, he and Epstein, knew full well
that they were completely false.
92. Dershowitz’s false statements constitute libel, as he and Epstein knew that they
were going to be transmitted in writing, widely disseminated on the internet and in print.
Dershowitz intended his false statements to be published by newspaper and other media outlets
internationally, and they were, in fact, published globally, including within the Southern District
of New York.
93. Dershowitz’s false statements constitute libel per se, including that they accused
her of a crime, and including that they exposed Roberts to public contempt, ridicule, aversion,
and disgrace, and induced an evil opinion of her in the minds of right-thinking persons.
94. Dershowitz’s false statements also constitute libel per se, inasmuch, among other
reasons, as they tended to injure Roberts in her professional capacity as the president of a nonprofit
corporation designed to help victims of sex trafficking, and inasmuch as they destroyed her
credibility and reputation among members of the community that seeks her help and that she
seeks to serve.
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95. Dershowitz’s false statements directly stated and also implied that in speaking out
against sex trafficking Roberts acted with fraud, dishonesty, and unfitness for the task.
Dershowitz’s false statements directly and indirectly assert that Roberts lied about being sexually
trafficked and abused by Epstein and having sex with Dershowitz, and that Roberts committed
the crimes of perjury and extortion. Dershowitz’s false statements were reasonably understood
by many persons who read his statements as conveying that specific intention and meaning.
96. Dershowitz’s false statements were reasonably understood by many persons who
read those statements as making specific factual claims that Roberts was lying about specific
facts, and committed the crimes of perjury and extortion.
97. Dershowitz specifically directed his false statements at Roberts’ true public
description of factual events, and many persons who read Dershowitz’s statements reasonably
understood that those statements referred directly to Roberts’ account of the abuse she suffered at
the hands of Epstein and Dershowitz.
98. Dershowitz and Epstein intended Dershowitz’s false statements to be widely
published and disseminated on television, through newspapers, by word of mouth, and on the
internet. As intended by Dershowitz and Epstein, Dershowitz’s statements were published and
disseminated around the world.
99. Dershowitz made his false statements on behalf of himself and Epstein in reckless
disregard of their truth or falsity and with malicious intent to destroy Roberts’s reputation and
credibility; to prevent her from further disseminating her life story; and to cause persons hearing
or reading Roberts’s descriptions of truthful facts to disbelieve her entirely. Dershowitz made his
false statements on behalf of himself and Epstein wantonly and with the specific intent to
maliciously damage Roberts’s good name and reputation in a way that would destroy her efforts
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to administer her non-profit foundation, or share her life story, and thereby help others who have
suffered from sexual abuse.
100. As a result of Dershowitz’s and Epstein’s campaign to spread false, discrediting,
and defamatory statements about Roberts, Roberts suffered substantial damages in an amount to
be proven at trial.
101. Dershowitz’s false statements have caused, and continue to cause, Roberts
economic damage, psychological pain and suffering, mental anguish and emotional distress, and
other direct and consequential damages and losses.
102. Dershowitz’s and Epstein’s campaign to spread his false statements nationally and
internationally was unusual and particularly egregious conduct. Dershowitz and Epstein sexually
abused and trafficked Roberts, conspired to avoid having these crimes properly prosecuted and
discovered, and wantonly and maliciously set out to falsely accuse, defame, and discredit
Roberts to deny and conceal the scope and scale of their crimes. In so doing, Dershowitz’s
efforts constituted a public wrong by deterring, damaging, and setting back Roberts’ efforts to
help victims of sex trafficking. Accordingly, this is a case in which exemplary and punitive
damages are appropriate.
103. Punitive and exemplary damages are necessary in this case to deter Dershowitz,
Epstein and others from wantonly and maliciously using a campaign of lies to discredit Roberts
and other victims of sex trafficking.
PRAYER FOR RELIEF
WHEREFORE, Plaintiff Roberts respectfully requests judgment against Defendant
Dershowitz, awarding compensatory, consequential, exemplary, and punitive damages in an
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Case 1:19-cv-03377 Document 1 Filed 04/16/19 Page 28 of 28
amount to be determined at trial, but in excess of the $75,000 jurisdictional requirement; costs of
suit; attorneys’ fees; and such other and further relief as the Court may deem just and proper.
JURY DEMAND
Plaintiff hereby demands a trial by jury on all causes of action asserted within this
pleading.
Dated: April 16, 2019.
/s/ Joshua Schiller
Boies Schiller Flexner LLP
55 Hudson Yards
New York, NY 10001
(212) 446-2300
/s/ Sigrid McCawley
Sigrid McCawley
Boies Schiller Flexner LLP
401 E. Las Olas Blvd., Suite 1200
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
(954) 356-0011
(Pro Hac To Be Filed)
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EXHIBIT 1
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Even from jail, sex abuser manipulated the system. His victims were kept in the dark
BY Julie K. Brown
NOV. 28, 2018
A decade before #MeToo, a multimillionaire sex offender from Florida got the ultimate break.
��
Palm Beach County Courthouse
June 30, 2008
Jeffrey Edward Epstein appeared at his sentencing dressed comfortably in a blue blazer, blue shirt, jeans and gray sneakers. His attorney, Jack
Goldberger, was at his side.
At the end of the 68-minute hearing, the 55-year-old silver-haired financier — accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls — was fingerprinted
and handcuffed, just like any other criminal sentenced in Florida.
But inmate No. W35755 would not be treated like other convicted sex offenders in the state of Florida, which has some of the strictest sex offender laws in
the nation.
Ten years before the #MeToo movement raised awareness about the kid-glove handling of powerful men accused of sexual abuse, Epstein’s lenient
sentence and his extraordinary treatment while in custody are still the source of consternation for the victims he was accused of molesting when they
were minors.
Beginning as far back as 2001, Epstein lured a steady stream of underage girls to his Palm Beach mansion to engage in nude massages, masturbation, oral
sex and intercourse, court and police records show. The girls — mostly from disadvantaged, troubled families — were recruited from middle and high
schools around Palm Beach County. Epstein would pay the girls for massages and offer them further money to bring him new girls every time he was at
his home in Palm Beach, according to police reports.
The girls, now in their late 20s and early 30s, allege in a series of federal civil lawsuits filed over the past decade that Epstein sexually abused hundreds of
girls, not only in Palm Beach, but at his homes in Manhattan, New Mexico and in the Caribbean.
In 2007, the FBI had prepared a 53-page federal indictment charging Epstein with sex crimes that could have put him in federal prison for life. But then-
Miami U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta signed off on a non-prosecution agreement, which was negotiated, signed and sealed so that no one would know
the full scope of Epstein’s crimes. The indictment was shelved, never to be seen again.
Epstein instead pleaded guilty to lesser charges in state court, and was required to register as a sex offender. He was sentenced to 18 months
incarceration.
But Epstein — who had a long list of powerful, politically connected friends — didn’t go to state prison like most sex offenders in Florida. Instead, the
multimillionaire was assigned to a private wing of the Palm Beach County stockade, where he was able to hire his own security detail. Even then, he didn’t
spend much time in a cell. He was allowed to go to his downtown West Palm Beach office for work release, up to 12 hours a day, six days a week, records
show.
Read Next
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Page 2 of 17
LOCAL
Sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein was surrounded by powerful people. Here’s a sampling
He was permitted to hire his own private psychologist for his required sex-offender counseling, and after his release from jail, his subsequent year of
probation under house arrest was filled with trips on his corporate jet to Manhattan and to his home in the U.S. Virgin Islands — all approved by the courts
with no objections from the state.
On the morning of his sentencing in 2008, none of Epstein’s victims were in the courtroom to protest his soft jail term or the unusual provisions of his
incarceration and probation — and that was by design.
Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein is a free man, despite sexually abusing dozens of underage girls according to police and prosecutors. His
victims have never had a voice, until now.
By
Emails and letters contained in court filings reveal the cozy, behind-the-scenes dealings between federal prosecutors and Epstein’s indomitable legal
team during the run-up to his federal plea deal, as they discussed ways to minimize his criminal charges and avoid informing the girls about the details of
the deal until after the case was resolved.
That arrangement benefited Epstein in a number of ways. Unlike other high-profile sex crime cases, federal prosecutors agreed to keep his sentencing
quiet, thereby limiting media coverage. His underage victims — identified in FBI documents — weren’t told about the plea deal so they weren’t in court,
where they could voice their objections and possibly sway the judge to give Epstein a harsher sentence or reject the agreement altogether.
Most important, Epstein’s crimes would be reduced to felony prostitution charges, giving him the ability to argue that the girls weren’t victims at all —
they were prostitutes.
Four accomplices named in Epstein’s non-prosecution agreement — Nadia Marcinkova, Sarah Kellen, Adriana Ross and Lesley Groff — were also given
immunity from federal prosecution. Marcinkova was a young girl when Epstein brought her from Yugoslavia to live with him. Several victims told police
that she was involved in orgies with Epstein and underage girls. Ross, Groff and Kellen, now known by her married name, Vickers, were schedulers who
arranged his underage sex sessions, according to the FBI and police.
Marcinkova and Kellen, through their attorneys, declined to comment for this story. The Herald was unsuccessful in reaching Ross and Groff.
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Acosta, who is now President Donald Trump’s secretary of labor, told lawmakers last year at his confirmation hearing that he did not know that Epstein
would receive such liberal treatment while incarcerated. But court records show that federal prosecutors under his authority acquiesced to many of
Epstein’s demands, including that he not go to federal or state prison.
“I can’t remember how I found out that he had taken a plea,’’ said Courtney Wild, identified by the FBI as one of more than three dozen underage girls —
some of them as young as 13 — who had been molested by Epstein at his waterfront estate between 2001 and 2005.
“We were purposefully misled into believing that his sentencing [in state court] had nothing to do with the federal crimes he committed against me or the
other girls.’’
Epstein, now 65, was released in 2009 after serving 13 months.
Wild, who was 14 when she met Epstein, is suing the federal government, alleging that prosecutors kept her and other victims in the dark as part of a
conspiracy to give Epstein — described in the lawsuit as “a powerful, politically connected multimillionaire” — one of the most lenient deals for a serial
child sex offender in history.
Courtney Wild is suing the federal government, claiming that prosecutors deliberately kept her and other victims of Jeffrey Epstein in the dark about the status of his case. The
U.S. Attorney’s Office signed a non-prosecution agreement with the multimillionaire. Emily Michot EMICHOT@MIAMIHERALD.COM
Now 31, Wild is Jane Doe No. 1 in “Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2 vs. the United States,” which seeks to overturn Epstein’s plea agreement on the grounds that
it was executed in violation of the federal Crime Victims’ Rights Act. The measure affords crime victims a series of rights, including to confer with
prosecutors and to be notified about plea negotiations and sentencing.
That lawsuit — and an unrelated state court case scheduled for trial on Dec. 4 — could expose more about Epstein’s crimes, as well as who else was
involved and whether there was any undue influence that tainted the federal case.
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Support investigative journalism
The Miami Herald obtained thousands of FBI and court records, lawsuits, and witness depositions, and went to federal court in New York to access sealed documents in the reporting of "Perversion of
Justice." The Herald also tracked down more than 60 women who said they were victims, some of whom had never spoken of the abuse before.
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Some of Epstein’s victims will finally have an opportunity to testify for the first time as part of the Dec. 4 case in state court in Palm Beach County. It pits
Fort Lauderdale attorney Bradley Edwards against Epstein, who had accused Edwards of malfeasance in his representation of several victims.
Jack Scarola, the attorney representing Edwards, said Epstein should be held accountable for his unrelenting attacks against Edwards — as well as others
who were involved in his case.
“We are going to demonstrate through this case that no one — no matter how much money they have — can abuse children and then attempt to bully
those who come to the defense of children,’’ said Scarola, a former state prosecutor.
Florida and beyond
Few people had as much insight into Epstein’s lifestyle — and its international reach — as Virginia Roberts. By age 16, Roberts had lived a life that was
beyond that of most high school girls.
At 11, she says, she was sexually molested by a family friend. At 12, she was smoking pot and skipping school. At 13, she was in and out of foster homes, and
at 14, she was on the street.
In Miami, the runaway became a captive of a 65-year-old sex trafficker, Ron Eppinger. For months, she says, she was sexually abused, kept in an
apartment and pimped out to pedophiles. After his indictment in 2000 on trafficking charges, Roberts returned to West Palm Beach and tried to heal.
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Virginia Roberts, now Giuffre, says she was 16 and working as a locker room attendant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort when she was approached by Ghislaine Maxwell,
Jeffrey Epstein’s associate, about becoming a masseuse for Epstein. COURTESY OF VIRGINIA ROBERTS
That summer, when Roberts was 16, she said her father helped her get a job as a locker room attendant at the spa at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in
Palm Beach, records show. Her father worked at the resort as a maintenance man.
There she said she met Ghislaine Maxwell, an Epstein friend and socialite daughter of the late British publishing magnate Robert Maxwell. She offered
Roberts an opportunity to become a massage therapist, working for Epstein.
In a sworn court affidavit and in a recent interview with the Herald, Roberts described how Epstein and Maxwell began grooming her — not just to
perform massages, but to sexually pleasure them and others.
“It started with one and it trickled into two and so on,’’ Roberts told the Herald. “And before you know it, I’m being lent out to politicians and academics
and royalty.’’
Roberts, too, was ordered to find Epstein girls — the younger, the better — by trolling areas where teenagers congregated, such as shopping malls, to lure
girls to whatever residence Epstein was staying in at the time, she told the Herald.
She began to travel with Epstein and Maxwell to Epstein’s other homes, in New York, New Mexico and the U.S. Virgin Islands — and her trips are
documented in flight logs that frequently list her name or her initials as a passenger, court records show.
“His appetite was insatiable. He wanted new girls, fresh, young faces every single day — that was just the sickness that he had,’’ Roberts said.
Neither Epstein nor his lead attorney, Goldberger, responded to requests for comment.
Roberts alleges that Epstein had cameras throughout his homes and said he liked her to tell him about the sexual peccadilloes of various important men
she had sex with.
“Epstein and Maxwell also got girls for Epstein’s friends and acquaintances. Epstein specifically told me that the reason for him doing this was so that
they would ‘owe him,’ they would ‘be in his pocket,’ and he would ‘have something on them,’ ” Roberts said in a court affidavit. “I understood him to
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mean that when someone was in his pocket, they owed him favors.’’
Roberts elaborated in her interview with the Herald, saying that Epstein had access to girls through a modeling agency that recruited them from overseas.
Epstein, who was close to Les Wexner, the owner of Victoria’s Secret, often talked about his connections to people in the modeling, fashion and acting
industries, Roberts told the Herald.
“He [Epstein] would tell the girls, ‘Hey, I will give you a modeling contract if you go have sex with this man [whichever acquaintance Epstein
designated],’ ’’ she said.
Roberts’ story about the modeling agency is supported, to a degree, by the sworn statement of a Miami woman named Maritza Vasquez, who was later
interviewed in New York by an FBI agent from Miami. Vasquez worked as a bookkeeper for Mc2, owned by Epstein associate Jean-Luc Brunel. He
employed scouts in South America, Europe and the former Soviet Union to find him models to bring to the United States, Vasquez said in a 2010 sworn
court deposition obtained by the Herald.
Vasquez stated in the deposition that from 2003 to 2006 she handled all the finances and payroll for the agency, including a bank transaction involving
Epstein. She said Epstein invested $1 million in Mc2.
The models were often very young — 13, 14 and 15 — and some of them were housed in apartments at 301 E. 66th St. in New York, a building purportedly
owned by Epstein, the deposition said.
Epstein didn’t charge the girls rent, Vasquez said, but Brunel charged them $1,000 a month, with four of them at a time sharing one apartment. The girls
who were the youngest and most beautiful stayed at the 66th Street apartments, which were more luxurious than the other apartments that were used to
house models who were not as young and desirable, she said.
Vasquez once let one of the models, who was 14, stay overnight with her after the girl ran into trouble with police for trying to get into a Manhattan
nightclub. Vasquez also testified that she helped a lawyer obtain visas for the foreign models, and assisted with their transportation to and from modeling
assignments and parties.
Vasquez said that even though the agency employed 200 to 300 models, the company didn’t make any money and Brunel was always broke. Brunel would
later sue Epstein, alleging that the financier’s sex scandal had caused his business to fail, but the suit was eventually dropped.
Vasquez testified it wasn’t unusual for the agency to send girls to an assignment with a wealthy client for $100,000 or more, but the girl wouldn’t be paid
the full amount — or anything at all — if she refused to be “molested.’’
Vasquez considered herself a mother figure and often coached the youngest girls to stick to the 9-to-5 modeling assignments because she didn’t think it
was appropriate for them to be having sex.
She said she met Epstein only once, but she often helped arrange for girls — many of them underage — to be sent to his homes in New York, Palm Beach
and his island in the Caribbean for parties. She heard salacious rumors about Epstein’s parties, but testified she had no firsthand knowledge about
whether they involved sex.
Vasquez said that she was questioned by the FBI and she tried to tell agents where to look for evidence.
Vasquez was eventually let go from the agency after she was accused of stealing money — money she claims was given to her by Brunel. Vasquez said she
was placed on probation for the theft. She never heard from the FBI about Epstein again.
The Herald was unsuccessful in reaching Brunel through his former attorney.
In a written statement released in 2015, Brunel denied any involvement in trafficking underage models.
“I strongly deny having participated, neither directly nor indirectly, in the actions Mr. Jeffrey Epstein is being accused of,” he said. “I strongly deny
having committed any illicit act or any wrongdoing in the course of my work as a scouter or model agencies manager.”
Too old at 19
In 2003, when Roberts turned 19, it was clear that Epstein had lost interest because she was too old for him, she said. She convinced him to pay for her to
get training to become a real professional masseuse so that she could move on.
In an interview, she explained that Epstein arranged for her to take a class in Thailand, but it came with a hitch: She said she was instructed to pick up a
Thai girl he had arranged to come to the States.
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Roberts, who showed the Herald the written instructions for the rendezvous, never picked up the girl because Roberts met a man on the trip who would
become her husband. The couple married and moved to Australia, where they currently live.
In 2007 — at the same time the FBI was investigating Epstein — Roberts, pregnant with her second child, said she unexpectedly received phone calls from
Maxwell and Epstein. She said they were worried that she had told police about them. She assured them she had not spoken to anyone, she said.
Shortly afterward, Roberts said, she was contacted by someone who claimed to be with the FBI. But she was afraid to tell that person details, fearing it was
really an Epstein associate posing as an FBI agent.
That agent, identified in court papers as Timothy Slater, confirmed that he and the other agent on the case, Nesbitt Kuyrkendall, called Roberts in January
or February 2007. In a sworn statement, Slater said he informed Roberts that they suspected she was a victim of Epstein’s.
The agent said Roberts answered basic questions, but became uncomfortable and “asked that I not bother her again.’’
Roberts said the agent didn’t try too hard to convince her to talk, and she was surprised when he hung up after asking her a few graphic questions about
her sex life. She said she was suspicious, but would have cooperated had the FBI talked to her in person and explained why they were asking about
Epstein.
“I was still scared to death,’’ Roberts said. “Jeffrey used to tell me that he owned the entire Palm Beach Police Department. I just didn’t want my family
harmed.’’
She nevertheless was listed by federal prosecutors as one of Epstein’s Palm Beach victims.
As the years went by and Roberts had a daughter, she would be haunted by a fear that Epstein was still taking advantage of young girls. In 2011, she went
public in a paid interview with a British tabloid, the Daily Mail, asserting that she had had sex with Prince Andrew, one of Epstein’s friends, several times
when she was a teen.
In her 2015 affidavit, she discussed in detail some of her alleged sex encounters with the prince and Epstein’s other friends, including lawyer Alan
Dershowitz. Edwards included the affidavit in the court file as part of the Jane Does’ Crime Victims’ Rights Act case, at which time it became public.
Virginia Roberts says she was loaned out by Jeffrey Epstein to his friend Prince Andrew, shown here. He denies they had sex. COURTESY OF VIRGINIA ROBERTS
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In the affidavit, Roberts claimed that Epstein and Maxwell directed her to have sex with Andrew and Dershowitz and others. She had sex with Andrew
three times, she alleged — once in London, when she was 17, again in New York, when she was 17, and a third time, as part of an orgy on Epstein’s island,
when she was 18. By law, at 17, she would have been above the age of consent in New York and England, but not in Florida, where the age of consent is 18.
As part of the affidavit, Roberts furnished a photograph of her with the prince and Maxwell, which she said was taken in London.
Dershowitz, who was part of Epstein’s criminal defense team, was often a guest at Epstein’s homes, she said.
“I had sexual intercourse with Dershowitz at least six times,’’ Roberts wrote in the 2015 court affidavit. “The first time was when I was about 16, early on
in my servitude to Epstein and it continued until I was 19.’’ She detailed some of those alleged trysts, which she said happened at Epstein’s homes in Palm
Beach, New Mexico and on Epstein’s island.
One of Epstein’s housemen, Juan Alessi, testified in a 2009 sworn deposition that Dershowitz visited Epstein’s Palm Beach home four or five times a year.
He said that Roberts was a frequent visitor as well, but he never placed Dershowitz and Roberts at the house at the same time.
Alessi, who testified he worked for Epstein from 1999 to 2002, said there were often young girls who gave massages at the house, even in the middle of the
night. But he said he never checked their ages, and only knew one girl for certain who was underage, because he had picked her up from high school. That
girl, who is now an actress, was not one of Epstein’s masseuses, Alessi said.
He also said he was Maxwell’s driver, and he recalls waiting outside of Mar-a-Lago the day Maxwell met Roberts. He testified he saw Maxwell talking to
Roberts and recalls Roberts coming to Epstein’s mansion later that day. One of Alessi’s jobs was to drive Maxwell to various spas in Palm Beach where she
left business cards in order to “recruit’’ more masseuses, he said in the sworn deposition.
Dershowitz, Prince Andrew and Maxwell have long denied Roberts’ allegations.
In an interview with the Herald, Dershowitz reiterated that he had never met Roberts, and never saw Epstein with any underage girls.
“The story was 100 percent flatly categorically made-up,’’ he said, adding that Roberts and her attorneys fabricated the assertion in order to get money
from other powerful, wealthy people she alleges she had sex with.
“The only possible reason to accuse me in public and [them] in private is so she could get money,’’ Dershowitz said.
Edwards and his co-counsel in the Crime Victims’ lawsuit, University of Utah law professor Paul Cassell, sued Dershowitz for defamation and Dershowitz
countersued in 2015. The case was settled out of court, with Dershowitz saying he had been vindicated.
Dershowitz said he received a massage at Epstein’s Palm Beach home only once — but that it was just a regular, therapeutic massage by a masseuse — not
by Roberts or anyone underage. Dershowitz’s wife was there at Epstein’s house at the time, Dershowitz said in the deposition taken for the case in 2015.
“I never had any knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein having any contact with any underage women — ever,’’ Dershowitz told the Herald.
Edwards and Cassell admitted making a “tactical mistake” in filing the accusations against Dershowitz as part of a lawsuit not involving him. But they
emphasized that the settlement had no bearing on the veracity of Roberts’ allegations.
The judge for the Crime Victims’ Rights Act lawsuit agreed that the affidavit was misplaced in that case, and it was dropped.
Prince Andrew’s spokesman at Buckingham Palace did not respond to an email requesting comment.
Roberts, now 35, said it has taken her a long time to stand up to Epstein. She and 20 other victims received settlements from Epstein, ranging from
$50,000 to more than $1 million. The exact amounts have been kept confidential.
“It takes so long until you are able to speak about it. It took me having a daughter and looking at this young, beautiful innocent baby to say I want to speak
out about it now. I’m hoping that this will bring out more girls so that they say, Me Too.’’
The state court hearing
The judge at Epstein’s sentencing hearing at the Palm Beach County Courthouse knew very little about Epstein’s crimes. The sentencing paperwork was
restricted to Epstein’s specific charges: one count of solicitation of prostitution and one count of procuring a person under the age of 18 for prostitution.
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“Are there more than one victim?’’ Circuit Court Judge Deborah Dale Pucillo asked the prosecutor at Epstein’s sentencing on June 30, 2008.
“There’s several,’’ replied assistant state prosecutor Lanna Belohlavek.
“Are all the victims in both of these cases in agreement with the terms of this plea?’‘ Pucillo later asked.
“Yes,’‘ Belohlavek replied, telling the judge that she had spoken to “several” of Epstein’s victims.
Emails show that federal prosecutors didn’t want the judge to know how many victims and accomplices there were.
Federal prosecutor A. Marie Villafaña — in a September 2007 email to Epstein lawyer Jay Lefkowitz — said: “I will mention co-conspirators but I would
prefer not to highlight for the judge all the other crimes and all the other persons that we could charge.’’
Attorney Spencer Kuvin happened to be in court that day because he’d heard Epstein was to appear, but Kuvin didn’t know why. He figured he’d use it as
an opportunity to serve Epstein with civil court papers involving one of several victims he represented. Instead, he listened to what was happening and
couldn’t believe that no one had contacted him or his clients.
“I was shocked to learn that the proceeding involved my client’s case and there was nothing I could do except watch as they disposed of her case without
ever telling her,’’ Kuvin said.
At the hearing, Belohlavek and Epstein’s attorney, Goldberger, were in sync, the court transcript shows. Epstein would be required to register as a sex
offender, but his probation would not be served under the strict requirements of sex offender probation.
Jeffrey Epstein is a registered sex offender in New York State and Florida. Emily Michot EMICHOT@MIAMIHERALD.COM
The judge didn’t question those provisions, but she did ask why Epstein was going to serve his sentence in the Palm Beach County stockade instead of in a
Florida state prison, like most sex offenders.
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After he pleaded guilty in state court, Jeffrey Epstein was assigned to a private section of the Palm Beach County stockade. Soon, however, he was allowed to leave the
compound six days a week, 12 hours a day, for what was termed work release. Emily Michot EMICHOT@MIAMIHERALD.COM
“We just decided that was the best way to accomplish what needed to be done here and the parties agreed that that sentence satisfied everyone’s
requirements,’’ Goldberger replied.
Said Judge Pucillo: “The taxpayers of Palm Beach County are going to pay 18 months to house this guy instead of DOC [the Department of Corrections]?”
Belohlavek: “Right.’’
Pucillo did not respond to a request for comment on the case.
Villafaña, the lead federal prosecutor in Epstein’s case, was in the courtroom, but there’s no indication she objected to Epstein’s cozier jail
accommodations.
When he entered jail in July 2008, Epstein was arguably the most well-known inmate there. Records also show that Epstein hired Palm Beach sheriff’s
deputies for his security details, paying them for the hours they spent monitoring him on work release at his West Palm Beach office, where he often
stayed until 10 p.m., jail logs show.
The Herald reviewed their time sheets, showing that the deputies logged visitors coming and going to and from his office throughout the day. A record log
of his visitors was kept in a safe, but the log no longer exists, according to a spokeswoman for the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.
One deputy who often worked Epstein’s detail said that his assignment was to stay in a front reception room of Epstein’s office. Epstein was in a separate
office — with the door closed — most of the day as he accepted visitors, both male and female, the deputies’ logs show.
“It was not our job to monitor what he was doing in that office,’’ the deputy,
now retired, told the Herald.
In their early reports in July 2008, the deputies referred to Epstein as
“inmate’’ but within a few weeks the language had changed and he was
called a “client.” He was occasionally allowed to take a break for lunch by
sitting outside in a park, the records show, and they also gave him
permission to scout for a new office. While on work release, he was required
to wear an ankle bracelet to monitor his whereabouts.

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The work release was approved by the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office,
said spokeswoman Therese Barbera.
“Jeffrey Epstein, while in custody, met the criteria for the Work Release
Program,’’ Barbera wrote in an email. “There was no factual basis to deny
Mr. Epstein the same availability of this program that is offered to other
inmates under similar circumstances. Mr. Epstein was closely monitored
and there were no problems encountered during his time in the program.”
But the sheriff’s own work release policy — a copy of which Barbera provided
to the Herald — specifically notes that sex offenders aren’t eligible for work
While officially confined to the Palm Beach County stockade, serving time for his sex
release.
offenses, Jeffrey Epstein was allowed to spend half his day at this West Palm Beach
office building. It was called work release, although Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office rules
At first, Barbera questioned whether Epstein was a sex offender at all, noting prohibit work-release status for sexual offenders. Emily Michot
that he didn’t have to register officially until after his release from the jail in EMICHOT@MIAMIHERALD.COM
2009. But his court papers clearly listed him as a sex offender. In fact, the papers Epstein signed — obtained by the Herald — included all the laws
governing registered sex offenders in Florida.
Barbera refused to explain why Epstein was seemingly allowed to deviate from the agency’s policies. She also would not respond to requests for an
accounting of the amount of money that Epstein paid the sheriff’s office for his private details.
Palm Beach Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, who has been in office since 2004 — and is widely considered to be one of the most powerful people in the county — did
not respond to requests for comment.
A spokeswoman for Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw declined to say why Jeffrey Epstein was allowed work-release status despite rules prohibiting work release for sex
offenders. Taylor Jones PALM BEACH POST
Epstein’s registration requirements are somewhat confusing, even to those who are responsible for keeping his registration. The Florida Department of
Law Enforcement, which keeps the online registry, and the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, where Epstein has to register in person twice a year, gave
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conflicting explanations over the past six months about who is responsible for ensuring that he is complying with the law.
On Nov. 14, the Herald asked the sheriff’s office for a full accounting of Epstein’s check-ins for 2018. The record the office supplied two days later showed
he registered in January and in July — as required. But PBSO also inexplicably had him registering on Nov. 14 — the very same day that the Herald asked
for the records from the sheriff’s office.
When asked about this sudden registration, Barbera replied: “The information we provided you was a snapshot from the FDLE website. Perhaps,
someone from FDLE can provide a reason for you.’’
Said FDLE spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger in an email: “The screenshot is not on the public registry. This is information inputted by the local agency when
the offender comes into the local sheriff’s office to register.’’
Plessinger said Epstein is not covered by the state’s new three-day rule, which requires sex offenders to re-register when they come to stay in Florida for
three days or more. His town of Palm Beach home is already on file, as a temporary residence, she said.
So it’s not clear why he would have suddenly registered a third time on Nov. 14.
State Sen. Lauren Book, a child sex abuse survivor and vocal advocate for tough sex offender monitoring, called the case an appalling example of how
those in the justice system allow wealthy people to skirt the law and bend the rules.
“These prosecutors, and judges and sheriffs who are making these decisions and allowing things to fly — we have to hold these people accountable. They
are supposed to uphold the law — regardless of who a person is and how much money they have in the bank or who they had on their airplane.’’
Piece by piece
Over the years, Courtney Wild, Virginia Roberts and more than a dozen other women who say they were victims of Epstein have been quietly challenging
the traditional legal norms that have failed to punish Epstein and other men in positions of power for sexual abuse.
Epstein has paid millions of dollars in civil compensation that, for the most part, has kept the details about his operation out of the public eye. As a result,
much — but not all — of the testimony and evidence collected as part of the vast litigation has been sealed or redacted from public court records.
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The girls who were abused by Jeffrey Epstein and the cops who championed their cause remain angry over what they regard as a gross injustice, while
Epstein's employees and those who engineered his non-prosecution agreement have prospered.
By
Taking a page from Epstein’s legal team, lawyers representing Epstein’s victims hired private investigators and former police detectives to dig into
Epstein’s life. Over the past decade, they’ve tracked down hundreds of people, including dozens of other potential victims; they’ve interviewed Epstein’s
recruiters, bookkeepers, housekeepers, butlers, pilots and drivers. They’ve traveled around the country and the world, taking statements and sworn
depositions, coaxing people to talk who had previously been too reticent to come forward.
In short, they did what criminal prosecutors didn’t do.
Some of the information they’ve learned was given to federal authorities in New York. Edwards said those authorities have shown no interest in opening a
new investigation focused on crimes he is alleged to have committed in that state, where he is listed as a level 3 sex offender, the most dangerous
category, considered at risk to re-offend, records show. In New York, he has to register every 90 days.
Virginia Roberts holds a photo of herself at age 16, when she says Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein began abusing her sexually. Emily Michot
EMICHOT@MIAMIHERALD.COM
Holding abusers accountable
In 2015, Roberts sued Maxwell for defamation in New York after Maxwell called her a liar in a news interview. The civil lawsuit was an effort by Roberts
not just to clear her name, but an attempt to prove that Epstein and Maxwell operated an international underage sex trafficking operation. The lawsuit
was settled out of court in 2017 and nearly all the evidence presented in the case has been sealed.
Roberts’ attorney, Sigrid McCawley, claims that Roberts received a sizable settlement, although the amount is confidential.
“She wanted to hold her abusers accountable and we were able to do that by bringing this case … which we ultimately settled very successfully for her,’’
said McCawley, an associate of noted Bush-Gore recount lawyer David Boies, who has also pursued cases against Epstein in federal court in New York.
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Maxwell’s lawyer, Laura Menninger, declined to comment, referring the Herald to the court history.
“[Roberts] fabricated a story of abuse at the hands of Ms. Maxwell in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars from British tabloids with a motive
for selling papers and advertisements and without regard for truth, veracity or substantiation,’’ Menninger noted in a 2016 response filed in the case.
In February, the Miami Herald filed a federal court motion in the Southern District of New York, seeking access to documents that were sealed in the
Maxwell case. The motion, which was not opposed by Roberts, could have cast light on the full scope of Epstein’s possible sex trafficking operation, who
was involved and whether it was covered up. Maxwell has opposed the Herald’s motion, which was denied in August.
The Herald is appealing.
Today, Epstein has a new private jet, which takes him around the world. Flight records show that he spends most of his time on his private island, Little St.
James in the U.S. Virgin Islands, which he now lists as his permanent residence. He is registered in New York and the U.S. Virgin Islands as a sex offender.
New Mexico, where he owns a sprawling ranch, does not list him as a convicted sex offender.
As part of its investigation, the Herald learned that in 2013, the federal government conceded that it had given Epstein what it called “valuable
consideration” for information he provided to the FBI as part of his plea deal. The documents do not elaborate, but Epstein — a hedge fund manager who
once worked for the investment firm Bear Stearns — was listed as a key investor who lost money in the financial crash of 2008.
Francey Hakes, a former federal child sex crimes prosecutor, said any consideration the government gave to Epstein should be made public.
“The public has a right to know why he got a slap on the wrist, and what was the interest that was so great that allowed him to not get prosecuted?”
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Nadia Marcinkova, now a professional pilot, worked for Jeffrey Epstein when he was molesting young women. Victims told police Marcinkova would participate in sex acts,
often as Epstein choreographed every move. Jerod Harris
In recent years, Epstein has been traveling the world in his new Gulfstream V jet. He has been active in various charitable causes and scientific research
projects. The Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation, based in the U.S. Virgin Islands, has helped fund NeuroTV, an online network that features interviews with
academics and scientists.
Then and now
Both Nadia Marcinkova and Sarah Kellen changed their names after the scandal.
Marcinkova, 32, briefly became Marcinko. She visited Epstein more than 70 times when he was in Palm Beach custody. She went on to a career in real
estate. And she is now an FAA-certified commercial pilot and flight instructor who goes by the name “Global Girl’’ on social media.
(www.facebook.com/GlobalGirlAviation/)
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Sarah Kellen, who used the name Kensington for a while, is now married to NASCAR driver Brian Vickers. The couple divides their time between homes
in North Carolina, New York and Miami Beach.
NASCAR driver Brian Vickers and his wife, Sarah, take part in pre-race ceremonies in Sparta, Ky., on June 28, 2014. She was known as Sarah Kellen when she was an aide to
Jeffrey Epstein. According to police, she scheduled visits of underage girls to Epstein’s Palm Beach estate for massages that turned sexual. She was not charged with a crime. Will
Schneekloth GETTY IMAGES
Maxwell, 56, transformed herself into an internationally known environmentalist. In 2012, she founded the TerraMar Project, a nonprofit environmental
group that works to protect the world’s oceans. In 2013, she gave a TED Talk on ocean conservation, discussing her diving expeditions around the world.
Dershowitz, 80, continues to lecture around the country. A professor
emeritus at Harvard Law School, Dershowitz has been a frequent
commenter on cable TV programs, often defending President Trump.
Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, 58, remained friends with Epstein, and in
2010, a photograph was taken of the two of them strolling in Manhattan. It
was later revealed that Epstein had loaned the prince’s ex-wife, Sarah
Ferguson, $24,000 to pay off some debts. Ferguson later called the loan a
“gigantic error of judgment.”
Plain human beings
Crime victims’ rights advocates have used the Epstein case to strengthen the
federal law in recent years, adding more precise language mandating that
prosecutors notify victims about plea bargains and allow victims to be heard
at sentencing.
Because some statute-of-limitation laws set deadlines for filing civil and
criminal sex crime cases, it’s difficult to bring them years later, said Marci
Hamilton, a University of Pennsylvania professor who is working to ease

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those restrictions across the country.
Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of a British press magnate and Jeffrey Epstein’s close
associate when he was inviting underage girls into his bedroom, leads a TED Talk on
environmental issues.
But she points out that there has been no statute of limitations for federal sex crimes involving children since 2002.
Children who are sexually abused often take decades to reveal what happened to them, in part because their brains aren’t wired at a young age to
understand the trauma they’ve experienced, said Kenneth V. Lanning, a retired FBI agent who investigated and studied child sex crimes for 40 years.
“We want to hold children to some superhuman standard because they behave this way. In reality, police, prosecutors and judges have to understand that
children are not all angels from heaven. They are just plain human beings who are emotionally immature so we have to protect them from their own
decisions.’’
Wild, who continues to fight her federal case on behalf of all of Epstein’s victims, said she hopes that the federal judge hearing the Crime Victims’ Rights
case will make a ruling soon, one that will send a message to prosecutors who fail to consider the rights of crime victims.
“Really if you think about this too hard, it’s scary because this is our government that is supposed to protect us but has done everything to protect a
pedophile,’’ she said.
Support investigative journalism
The Miami Herald obtained thousands of FBI and court records, lawsuits, and witness depositions, and went to federal court in New York to access sealed documents in the reporting of "Perversion of
Justice." The Herald also tracked down more than 60 women who said they were victims, some of whom had never spoken of the abuse before.
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Alan Dershowitz: ‘I never had sex with Virginia Roberts’ | Miami
Herald
miamiherald.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article222532470.html
In its series on the Jeffrey Epstein case, “Perversion of Justice,” the Herald quotes an
affidavit by Virginia Roberts — a woman I never met — claiming she had sex with me on
Epstein’s island, ranch, plane and mansion. It then simply says I “denied” it.
In fact, I disproved it. I produced my travel, phone, credit card and TV appearance
records, conclusively proving that I could not have been and was not in any of these
places during the time Roberts knew Epstein. The former FBI director, assisted by a
former assistant U.S. attorney and a chief federal marshal, reviewed these records and
the other evidence and concluded that, “The totality of the evidence found during the
investigation refutes the allegations.”
There is other evidence, currently under seal, that directly establishes my innocence. I am
seeking to unseal emails between Roberts and a journalist, a book manuscript by Roberts
and a legal brief that are smoking guns showing that I was “deliberately framed for
financial reasons.”
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inRead invented by Teads
There is also irrefutable evidence that Roberts lied about other people for money. She
told a British tabloid that she met Al and Tipper Gore on Epstein’s island and swore that
she had dinner with Bill Clinton on the island. But Secret Service records prove that none
of these people were on the island. Indeed, the Gores didn’t even know Epstein.
Get six months of free digital access to the Miami Herald
I have a tape recording of a conversation with Roberts’ closest friend in which she says
that Roberts told her she “felt pressure to go after [Dershowitz]” in order to obtain
money from a wealthy businessman, and that Roberts had never previously included me
among the people with whom she claimed to have had sex.
Finally, one of Roberts’ own lawyers has acknowledged in front of witnesses that her
claims against me are “wrong” “simply wrong.”
The evidence of my innocence is indisputable: I never met Roberts; I never had sex with
her; she simply made up the entire story for money.
Roberts made her false claims against me in court documents that immunize her from
being sued for defamation. I challenge her to repeat her false accusations out of court,
so that I can sue her for defamation and let a jury decide — after seeing all the evidence,
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including the suppressed emails and book manuscript — who is telling the truth and who
is lying.
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https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/dershowitz-goes-off-on-woman-who-made-underage-...
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Dershowitz Goes Off on Woman Who Made Underage Sex Allegations: 'She Should Be ...
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Dershowitz Goes Off on Woman Who Made Underage Sex
Allegations: ‘She Should Be Seriously Punished’
by Ronn Blitzer | 2:26 pm, December 4th, 2018
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� � 00:34 10:57 � � �
Just hours after convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein agreed to settle
a civil case brought against him by attorney Bradley
Edwards, Epstein’s lawyer from his past criminal case, Alan
Dershowitz, discussed his former client on the Law&Crime Network.
Epstein was accused of trafficking more than 40 underage girls for
sex, and one such girl claimed Dershowitz himself had sex with her
when she was underage.
Dershowitz vehemently denies the claim, telling host Brian Ross that
accuser Virginia Roberts is a “certified, complete, total liar,” and that
her allegations are a “complete and total fabrication.” He also added
that she should be punished by the law for what she did.
The Harvard Law Professor Emeritus noted that Roberts’ allegations
were eventually withdrawn, and that the FBI recognized the
evidence showed he was not where she said he was. He pointed to
documented evidence that proves he is innocent.
“I can prove conclusively that she made the whole thing up,”
Dershowitz said, citing travel records that he says prove where he
was at the time she claims she had sex with him. “It’s conclusive,
conclusive evidence.”
“More importantly, I can prove where I wasn’t,” he said, after stating
outright, “Never met her, don’t know who she is, never heard of her.”
Similarly, Dershowitz said that Roberts claimed that notable figures
such as Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Tipper Gore were present on an
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island, when Secret Service records proved they were never even
there.
Dershowitz said Roberts’ allegations were part of an extortion plot,
and that she “should be seriously punished for submitting false
information and a false affidavit.”
The attorney emphasized that Roberts has not been willing to repeat
her allegations against him in public, and that she has only accused
him in the context of litigation, which affords certain protections.
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“She simply hides behind litigation privileges,” Dershowitz said,
encouraging Ross to call Roberts and see if she would repeat her
claims. “And if she does, I will be in court the next day suing her for
defamation and I will win the case ’cause I can prove conclusively
that she made up the whole story from top to bottom.”
Ross then turned to the controversial deal that Epstein received from
federal prosecutors who were investigating the trafficking case
against him. Federal prosecutors agreed not to prosecute him, and let
him plead guilty to state charges that resulted in a 13-month prison
sentence that allowed Epstein to leave prison during the day for
work. Federal prosecutors allegedly did not even inform victims
before making the deal, which is now the subject of a request for an
Inspector General investigation. Congressional Democrats said in a
letter that they want to know more about the circumstances
surrounding the deal, which was made by then-U.S. Attorney and
current Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta.
As Epstein’s defense attorney in that case, Dershowitz is not upset
about it the deal at all.
“I’m very proud of that deal, that’s what lawyers are supposed to do,”
he said. “Lawyers are supposed to get the best deals they can.” If he
could have gotten 10 months or no time at all, that would have been
even better, he said.
Acosta said in the past that Epstein’s lawyers, including Dershowitz,
put pressure on his office by investigating his staff. Dershowitz has
denied this.
“Acosta was very tough,” Dershowitz said, contrary to concerns that
he did anything improper. Dershowitz pointed out that the problem
feds had was proving that girls were transported in interstate
commerce.
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“Unless you can prove that, you don’t have a federal case, only a state
case.”
[Image via Law & Crime Network screengrab]
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Society
The Talented Mr. Epstein
Lately, Jeffrey Epstein’s high-flying style has been drawing oohs and aahs: the bachelor
financier lives in New York’s largest private residence, claims to take only billionaires as clients,
and flies celebrities including Bill Clinton and Kevin Spacey on his Boeing 727. But pierce his
air of mystery and the picture changes. Vicky Ward explores Epstein’s investment career, his ties
to retail magnate Leslie Wexner, and his complicated past.
by
�
Vicky Ward
June 27, 2011 12:00 am
On Manhattan’s Upper East Side, home to some of the most expensive real estate on earth, exists
the crown jewel of the city’s residential town houses. With its 15-foot-high oak door, huge
arched windows, and nine floors, it sits on—or, rather, commands—the block of 71st Street
between Fifth and Madison Avenues. Almost ludicrously out of proportion with its four- and
five-story neighbors, it seems more like an institution than a house. This is perhaps not
surprising—until 1989 it was the Birch Wathen private school. Now it is said to be Manhattan’s
largest private residence.
Inside, amid the flurry of menservants attired in sober black suits and pristine white gloves, you
feel you have stumbled into someone’s private Xanadu. This is no mere rich person’s home, but
a high-walled, eclectic, imperious fantasy that seems to have no boundaries.
The entrance hall is decorated not with paintings but with row upon row of individually framed
eyeballs; these, the owner tells people with relish, were imported from England, where they were
made for injured soldiers. Next comes a marble foyer, which does have a painting, in the manner
of Jean Dubuffet … but the host coyly refuses to tell visitors who painted it. In any case, guests
are like pygmies next to the nearby twice-life-size sculpture of a naked African warrior.
Despite its eccentricity the house is curiously impersonal, the statement of someone who wants
to be known for the scale of his possessions. Its occupant, financier Jeffrey Epstein, 50, admits to
friends that he likes it when people think of him this way. A good-looking man, resembling
Ralph Lauren, with thick gray-white hair and a weathered face, he usually dresses in jeans, knit
shirts, and loafers. He tells people he bought the house because he knew he “could never live
anywhere bigger.” He thinks 51,000 square feet is an appropriately large space for someone like
himself, who deals mostly in large concepts—especially large sums of money.
Guests are invited to lunch or dinner at the town house—Epstein usually refers to the former as
“tea,” since he likes to eat bite-size morsels and drink copious quantities of Earl Grey. (He does
not touch alcohol or tobacco.) Tea is served in the “leather room,” so called because of the
cordovan-colored fabric on the walls. The chairs are covered in a leopard print, and on the wall
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hangs a huge, Oriental fantasy of a woman holding an opium pipe and caressing a snarling
lionskin. Under her gaze, plates of finger sandwiches are delivered to Epstein and guests by the
menservants in white gloves.
Upstairs, to the right of a spiral staircase, is the “office,” an enormous gallery spanning the width
of the house. Strangely, it holds no computer. Computers belong in the “computer room” (a
smaller room at the back of the house), Epstein has been known to say. The office features a
gilded desk (which Epstein tells people belonged to banker J. P. Morgan), 18th-century black
lacquered Portuguese cabinets, and a nine-foot ebony Steinway “D” grand. On the desk, a
paperback copy of the Marquis de Sade’s The Misfortunes of Virtue was recently spotted.
Covering the floor, Epstein has explained, “is the largest Persian rug you’ll ever see in a private
home—so big, it must have come from a mosque.” Amid such splendor, much of which reflects
the work of the French decorator Alberto Pinto, who has worked for Jacques Chirac and the
royal families of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, there is one particularly startling oddity: a stuffed
black poodle, standing atop the grand piano. “No decorator would ever tell you to do that,”
Epstein brags to visitors. “But I want people to think what it means to stuff a dog.” People can’t
help but feel it’s Epstein’s way of saying that he always has the last word.
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In addition to the town house, Epstein lives in what is reputed to be the largest private dwelling
in New Mexico, on an $18 million, 7,500-acre ranch which he named “Zorro.” “It makes the
town house look like a shack,” Epstein has said. He also owns Little St. James, a 70-acre island
in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where the main house is currently being renovated by Edward Tuttle,
a designer of the Amanresorts. There is also a $6.8 million house in Palm Beach, Florida, and a
fleet of aircraft: a Gulfstream IV, a helicopter, and a Boeing 727, replete with trading room, on
which Epstein recently flew President Clinton, actors Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey,
supermarket magnate Ron Burkle, Lew Wasserman’s grandson, Casey Wasserman, and a few
others, on a mission to explore the problems of AIDS and economic development in Africa.
Epstein is charming, but he doesn’t let the charm slip into his eyes. They are steely and
calculating, giving some hint at the steady whir of machinery running behind them. “Let’s play
chess,” he said to me, after refusing to give an interview for this article. “You be white. You get
the first move.” It was an appropriate metaphor for a man who seems to feel he can win no
matter what the advantage of the other side. His advantage is that no one really seems to know
him or his history completely or what his arsenal actually consists of. He has carefully
engineered it so that he remains one of the few truly baffling mysteries among New York’s
moneyed world. People know snippets, but few know the whole.
“He’s very enigmatic,” says Rosa Monckton, the former C.E.O. of Tiffany & Co. in the U.K. and
a close friend since the early 1980s. “You think you know him and then you peel off another ring
of the onion skin and there’s something else extraordinary underneath. He never reveals his
hand…. He’s a classic iceberg. What you see is not what you get.”
Even acquaintances sense a curious dichotomy: Yes, he lives like a “modern maharaja,” as Leah
Kleman, one of his art dealers, puts it. Yet he is fastidiously, almost obsessively private—he lists
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himself in the phone book under a pseudonym. He rarely attends society gatherings or weddings
or funerals; he considers eating in restaurants like “eating on the subway”—i.e., something he’d
never do. There are many women in his life, mostly young, but there is no one of them to whom
he has been able to commit. He describes his most public companion of the last decade,
Ghislaine Maxwell, 41, the daughter of the late, disgraced media baron Robert Maxwell, as
simply his “best friend.” He says she is not on his payroll, but she seems to organize much of his
life—recently she was making telephone inquiries to find a California-based yoga instructor for
him. (Epstein is still close to his two other long-term girlfriends, Paula Heil Fisher, a former
associate of his at the brokerage firm Bear Stearns and now an opera producer, and Eva
Andersson Dubin, a doctor and onetime model. He tells people that when a relationship is over
the girlfriend “moves up, not down,” to friendship status.)
Some of the businessmen who dine with him at his home—they include newspaper publisher
Mort Zuckerman, banker Louis Ranieri, Revlon chairman Ronald Perelman, real-estate tycoon
Leon Black, former Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold, Tom Pritzker (of Hyatt Hotels), and
real-estate personality Donald Trump—sometimes seem not all that clear as to what he actually
does to earn his millions. Certainly, you won’t find Epstein’s transactions written about on
Bloomberg or talked about in the trading rooms. “The trading desks don’t seem to know him. It’s
unusual for animals that big not to leave any footprints in the snow,” says a high-level
investment manager.
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Unlike such fund managers as George Soros and Stanley Druckenmiller, whose client lists and
stock maneuverings act as their calling cards, Epstein keeps all his deals and clients secret, bar
one client: billionaire Leslie Wexner, the respected chairman of Limited Brands. Epstein insists
that ever since he left Bear Stearns in 1981 he has managed money only for billionaires—who
depend on him for discretion. “I was the only person crazy enough, or arrogant enough, or
misplaced enough, to make my limit a billion dollars or more,” he tells people freely. According
to him, the flat fees he receives from his clients, combined with his skill at playing the currency
markets “with very large sums of money,” have afforded him the lifestyle he enjoys today.
Why do billionaires choose him as their trustee? Because the problems of the mega-rich, he tells
people, are different from yours and mine, and his unique philosophy is central to understanding
those problems: “Very few people need any more money when they have a billion dollars. The
key is not to have it do harm more than anything else…. You don’t want to lose your money.”
He has likened his job to that of an architect—more specifically, one who specializes in
remodeling: “I always describe [a billionaire] as someone who started out in a small home and as
he became wealthier had add-ons. He added on another addition, he built a room over the garage
… until you have a house that is usually a mess…. It’s a large house that has been put together
over time where no one could foretell the financial future and their accompanying needs.”
He makes it sound as though his job combines the roles of real-estate agent, accountant, lawyer,
money manager, trustee, and confidant. But, as with Jay Gatsby, myths and rumor swirl around
Epstein.
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Here are some of the hard facts about Epstein—ones that he doesn’t mind people knowing: He
grew up middle-class in Brooklyn. His father worked for the city’s parks department. His parents
viewed education as “the way out” for him and his younger brother, Mark, now working in real
estate. Jeffrey started to play the piano—for which he maintains a passion—at five, and he went
to Brooklyn’s Lafayette High School. He was good at mathematics, and in his early 20s he got a
job teaching physics and math at Dalton, the elite Manhattan private school. While there he
began tutoring the son of Bear Stearns chairman Ace Greenberg and was friendly with a
daughter of Greenberg’s. Soon he went to Bear Stearns, where, under the mentorship of both
Greenberg and current Bear Stearns C.E.O. James Cayne, he did well enough to become a
limited partner—a rung beneath full partner. He abruptly departed in 1981 because, he has said,
he wanted to run his own business.
Thereafter the details recede into shadow. A few of the handful of current friends who have
known him since the early 1980s recall that he used to tell them he was a “bounty hunter,”
recovering lost or stolen money for the government or for very rich people. He has a license to
carry a firearm. For the last 15 years, he’s been running his business, J. Epstein & Co.
Since Leslie Wexner appeared in his life—Epstein has said this was in 1986; others say it was in
1989, at the earliest—he has gradually, in a way that has not generally made headlines, come to
be accepted by the Establishment. He’s a member of various commissions and councils: he is on
the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, the New York Academy of
Sciences, and the Institute of International Education.
His current fan club extends to Cayne, Henry Rosovsky, the former dean of Harvard’s Faculty of
Arts and Sciences, and Larry Summers, Harvard’s current president. Harvard law professor Alan
Dershowitz says, “I’m on my 20th book…. The only person outside of my immediate family that
I send drafts to is Jeffrey.” Real-estate developer and philanthropist Marshall Rose, who has
worked with Epstein on projects in New Albany, Ohio, for Wexner, says, “He digests and
decodes the information very rapidly, which is to me terrific because we have shorter meetings.”
Also on the list of admirers are former senator George Mitchell and a gaggle of distinguished
scientists, most of whom Epstein has helped fund in recent years. They include Nobel Prize
winners Gerald Edelman and Murray Gell-Mann, and mathematical biologist Martin Nowak.
When these men describe Epstein, they talk about “energy” and “curiosity,” as well as a love for
theoretical physics that they don’t ordinarily find in laymen. Gell-Mann rather sweetly mentions
that “there are always pretty ladies around” when he goes to dinner chez Epstein, and he’s under
the impression that Epstein’s clients include the Queen of England. Both Nowak and Dershowitz
were thrilled to find themselves shaking the hand of a man named “Andrew” in Epstein’s house.
“Andrew” turned out to be Prince Andrew, who subsequently arranged to sit in the back of
Dershowitz’s law class.
Epstein gets annoyed when anyone suggests that Wexner “made him.” “I had really rich clients
before,” he has said. Yet he does not deny that he and Wexner have a special relationship.
Epstein sees it as a partnership of equals. “People have said it’s like we have one brain between
two of us: each has a side.”
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“I think we both possess the skill of seeing patterns,” says Wexner. “But Jeffrey sees patterns in
politics and financial markets, and I see patterns in lifestyle and fashion trends. My skills are not
in investment strategy, and, as everyone who knows Jeffrey knows, his are not in fashion and
design. We frequently discuss world trends as each of us sees them.”
By the time Epstein met Wexner, the latter was a retail legend who had built a $3 billion
empire—one that now includes Victoria’s Secret, Express, and Bath & Body Works—from
$5,000 lent him by his aunt. “Wexner saw in Jeffrey the type of person who had the potential to
realize his [Jeffrey’s] dreams,” says someone who has worked closely with both men. “He gave
Jeffrey the ball, and Jeffrey hit it out of the park.”
Wexner, through a trust, bought the town house in which Epstein now lives for a reported $13.2
million in 1989. In 1993, Wexner married Abigail Koppel, a 31-year-old lawyer, and the
newlyweds relocated to Ohio; in 1996, Epstein moved into the town house. Public documents
suggest that the house is still owned by the trust that bought it, but Epstein has said that he now
owns the house.
Wexner trusts Epstein so completely that he has assigned him the power of fiduciary over all of
his private trusts and foundations, says a source close to Wexner. In 1992, Epstein even
persuaded Wexner to put him on the board of the Wexner Foundation in place of Wexner’s ailing
mother. Bella Wexner recovered and demanded to be reinstated. Epstein has said they settled by
splitting the foundation in two.
Epstein does not care that he comes between family members. In fact, he sees it as his job. He
tells people, “I am there to represent my client, and if my client needs protecting—sometimes
even from his own family—then it’s often better that people hate me, not the client.”
“You’ve probably heard I’m vicious in my representation of my clients,” he tells people proudly;
Leah Kleman describes his haggling over art prices as something like a scene out of the movie
Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. Even a former mentor says he’s seen “the dark side” of
Epstein, and a Bear Stearns source recalls a meeting in which Epstein chewed out a team making
a presentation for Wexner as being so brutal as to be “irresponsible.”
One reporter, in fact, received three threats from Epstein while preparing a piece. They were
delivered in a jocular tone, but the message was clear: There will be trouble for your family if I
don’t like the article.
On the other hand, Epstein is clearly very generous with friends. Joe Pagano, an Aspen-based
venture capitalist, who has known Epstein since before his Bear Stearns days, can’t say enough
nice things: “I have a boy who’s dyslexic, and Jeffrey’s gotten close to him over the years….
Jeffrey got him into music. He bought him his first piano. And then as he got to school he had
difficulty … in studying … so Jeffrey got him interested in taking flying lessons.”
Rosa Monckton recalls Epstein telling her that her daughter, Domenica, who suffers from Down
syndrome, needed the sun, and that Rosa should feel free to bring her to his house in Palm Beach
anytime.
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Some friends remember that in the late 80s Epstein would offer to upgrade the airline tickets of
good friends by affixing first-class stickers; the only problem was that the stickers turned out to
be unofficial. Sometimes the technique worked, but other times it didn’t, and the unwitting
recipients found themselves exiled to coach. (Epstein has claimed that he paid for the upgrades,
and had no knowledge of the stickers.) Many of those who benefited from Epstein’s largesse
claim that his generosity comes with no strings attached. “I never felt he wanted anything from
me in return,” says one old friend, who received a first-class upgrade.
Epstein is known about town as a man who loves women—lots of them, mostly young. Model
types have been heard saying they are full of gratitude to Epstein for flying them around, and he
is a familiar face to many of the Victoria’s Secret girls. One young woman recalls being
summoned by Ghislaine Maxwell to a concert at Epstein’s town house, where the women
seemed to outnumber the men by far. “These were not women you’d see at Upper East Side
dinners,” the woman recalls. “Many seemed foreign and dressed a little bizarrely.” This same
guest also attended a cocktail party thrown by Maxwell that Prince Andrew attended, which was
filled, she says, with young Russian models. “Some of the guests were horrified,” the woman
says.
“He’s reckless,” says a former business associate, “and he’s gotten more so. Money does that to
you. He’s breaking the oath he made to himself—that he would never do anything that would
expose him in the media. Right now, in the wake of the publicity following his trip with Clinton,
he must be in a very difficult place.”
According to S.E.C. and other legal documents unearthed by VANITY FAIR, Epstein may have
good reason to keep his past cloaked in secrecy: his real mentor, it might seem, was not Leslie
Wexner but Steven Jude Hoffenberg, 57, who, for a few months before the S.E.C. sued to freeze
his assets in 1993, was trying to buy the New York Post. He is currently incarcerated in the
Federal Medical Center in Devens, Massachusetts, serving a 20-year sentence for bilking
investors out of more than $450 million in one of the largest Ponzi schemes in American history.
When Epstein met Hoffenberg in London in the 1980s, the latter was the charismatic, audacious
head of the Towers Financial Corporation, a collection agency that was supposed to buy debts
that people owed to hospitals, banks, and phone companies. But Hoffenberg began using
company funds to pay off earlier investors and service a lavish lifestyle that included a mansion
on Long Island, homes on Manhattan’s Sutton Place and in Florida, and a fleet of cars and
planes.
Hoffenberg and Epstein had much in common. Both were smart and obsessed with making
money. Both were from Brooklyn. According to Hoffenberg, the two men were introduced by
Douglas Leese, a defense contractor. Epstein has said they were introduced by John Mitchell, the
late attorney general.
Epstein had been running International Assets Group Inc. (I.A.G.), a consulting company, out of
his apartment in the Solo building on East 66th Street in New York. Though he has claimed that
he managed money for billionaires only, in a 1989 deposition he testified that he spent 80
percent of his time assisting people recover stolen money from fraudulent brokers and lawyers.
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He was also not above entering into risky, tax-sheltered oil and gas deals with much smaller
investors. A lawsuit that Michael Stroll, the former head of Williams Electronics Inc., filed
against Epstein shows that in 1982 I.A.G. received an investment from Stroll of $450,000, which
Epstein put into oil. In 1984 Stroll asked for his money back; four years later he had received
only $10,000. Stroll lost the suit, after Epstein claimed in court, among other things, that the
check for $10,000 was for a horse he’d bought from Stroll. “My net worth never exceeded four
and a half million dollars,” Stroll has said.
Hoffenberg, says a close friend, “really liked Jeffrey…. Jeffrey has a way of getting under your
skin, and he was under Hoffenberg’s.” Also appealing to Hoffenberg were Epstein’s social
connections; they included oil mogul Cece Wang (father of the designer Vera) and Mohan
Murjani, whose clothing company grew into Gloria Vanderbilt Jeans. Epstein lived large even
then. One friend recalls that when he took Canadian heiress Wendy Belzberg on a date he hired a
Rolls-Royce especially for the occasion. (Epstein has claimed he owned it.)
In 1987, Hoffenberg, according to sources, set Epstein up in the offices he still occupies in the
Villard House, on Madison Avenue, across a courtyard from the restaurant Le Cirque.
Hoffenberg hired his new protégé as a consultant at $25,000 a month, and the relationship
flourished. “They traveled everywhere together—on Hoffenberg’s plane, all around the world,
they were always together,” says a source. Hoffenberg has claimed that Epstein confided in him,
saying, for example, that he had left Bear Stearns in 1981 after he was discovered executing
“illegal operations.”
Several of Epstein’s Bear Stearns contemporaries recall that Epstein left the company very
suddenly. Within the company there were rumors also that he was involved in a technical
infringement, and it was thought that the executive committee asked that he resign after his two
supporters, Ace Greenberg and Jimmy Cayne, were outnumbered. Greenberg says he can’t recall
this; Cayne denies it happened, and Epstein has denied it as well. “Jeffrey Epstein left Bear
Stearns of his own volition,” says Cayne. “It was never suggested that he leave by any member
of management, and management never looked into any improprieties by him. Jeffrey said
specifically, ‘I don’t want to work for anybody else. I want to work for myself.’” Yet, this is not
the story that Epstein told to the S.E.C. in 1981 and to lawyers in a 1989 deposition involving a
civil business case in Philadelphia.
In 1981 the S.E.C.’s Jonathan Harris and Robert Blackburn took Epstein’s testimony and that of
other Bear Stearns employees in part of what became a protracted case about insider trading
around a tender offer placed on March 11, 1981, by the Seagram Company Ltd. for St. Joe
Minerals Corp. Ultimately several Italian and Swiss investors were found guilty, including
Italian financier Giuseppe Tome, who had used his relationship with Seagram owner Edgar
Bronfman Sr. to obtain information about the tender offer.
After the tender offer was announced, the S.E.C. began investigating trades involving St. Joe at
Bear Stearns and other firms. Epstein resigned from Bear Stearns on March 12. The S.E.C. was
tipped off that Epstein had information on insider trading at Bear Stearns, and it was therefore
obliged to question him. In his S.E.C. testimony, given on April 1, 1981, Epstein claimed that he
had found “offensive” the way Bear Stearns management had handled a disciplinary action
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following its discovery that he had committed a possible “Reg D” violation—evidently he had
lent money to his closest friend. (In the 1989 deposition he said that he’d lent approximately
$20,000 to Warren Eisenstein, to buy stock.) Such an action could have been considered
improper, although Epstein claimed he had not realized this until afterward.
According to Epstein, Bear Stearns management had questioned him about the loan around
March 4. The questioners, Epstein said, were Michael (Mickey) Tarnopol and Alvin Einbender.
In his 1989 deposition Epstein recalled that the partner who had made an “issue” of the matter
was Marvin Davidson. On March 9, Epstein said, he had met with Tarnopol and Einbender
again, and the two partners told him that the executive committee had weighed the offense,
together with previous “carelessness” over expenses, and he would be fined $2,500.
“There was discussion whether, in fact, I had ever put in an airline ticket for someone else and
not myself and I said that it was possible, … since my secretary handles my expenses,” Epstein
told the S.E.C. In his 1989 testimony he stated that the “Reg D” incident had cost him a shot at
partnership that year.
What the S.E.C. seemed to be especially interested in was whether there was a connection
between Epstein’s leaving and the alleged insider trading in St. Joe Minerals by other people at
Bear Stearns:
Q: Sir, are you aware that certain rumors may have been circulating around your firm in
connection with your reasons for leaving the firm?
A: I’m aware that there were many rumors.
Q: What were the rumors you heard?
A: Nothing to do with St. Joe.
Q: Can you relate what you heard?
A: It was having to do with an illicit affair with a secretary.
Q: Have you heard any other rumors suggesting that you had made a presentation or
communication to the Executive Committee concerning alleged improprieties by other members
or employees of Bear Stearns?
A: I, in fact, have heard that rumor, but it’s been from Mr. Harris in our conversation last week.
Q: Have you heard it from anyone else?
A: No.
A little later the interview focuses on James Cayne:
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Q: Did you ever hear while you were at Bear Stearns that Mr. Cayne may have trader or insider
information in connection with St. Joe Minerals Corporation?
Q: Did Mr. Cayne ever have any conversation with you about St. Joe Minerals?
Q: Did you happen to overhear any conversations between Mr. Cayne and anyone else regarding
St. Joe Minerals?
And still later in the questioning comes this exchange:
Q: Have you had any type of business dealings with Mr. Cayne?
A: There’s no relationship with Bear Stearns.
Q: Pardon?
A: Other than Bear Stearns, no.
Q: Have you been a participant in any type of business venture with Mr. Cayne?
Q: Do you have any expectation of participating in any business venture with Mr. Cayne?
Q: Have you had any business participations with Mr. Theram?
A: No; nor do I anticipate any.
Q: Mr. Epstein, did anyone at Bear Stearns tell you in words or substance that you should not
divulge anything about St. Joe Minerals to the staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission?
Q: Has anyone indicated to you in any way, either directly or indirectly, in words or substance,
that your compensation for this past year or any future monies coming to you from Bear Stearns
will be contingent upon your not divulging information to the Securities and Exchange
Commission?
A: No.
Despite the circumstances of Epstein’s leaving, Bear Stearns agreed to pay him his annual
bonus—which he anticipated as being approximately $100,000.
The S.E.C. never brought any charges against anyone at Bear Stearns for insider trading in St.
Joe, but its questioning seems to indicate that it was skeptical of Epstein’s answers. Some
sources have wondered why, if he was such a big producer at Bear Stearns, he would have given
it up over a mere $2,500 fine.
Certainly the years after Epstein left the firm were not obviously prosperous ones. His luck
didn’t seem to change until he met Hoffenberg.
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One of Epstein’s first assignments for Hoffenberg was to mastermind doomed bids to take over
Pan American World Airways in 1987 and Emery Air Freight Corp. in 1988. Hoffenberg
claimed in a 1993 hearing before a grand jury in Illinois that Epstein came up with the idea of
financing these bids through Towers’s acquisition of two ailing Illinois insurance companies,
Associated Life and United Fire. “He was hired by us to work on the securities side of the
insurance companies and Towers Financial, supposedly to make a profit for us and for the
companies,” Hoffenberg reportedly told the grand jury. He also alleged that Epstein was the
“technician,” executing the schemes, although, having no broker’s license, he had to rely on
others to make the trades. Much of Hoffenberg’s subsequent testimony in his criminal case has
proven to be false, and Epstein has claimed he was merely asked how the bids could be
accomplished and has said he had nothing to do with the financing of them. Yet Richard Allen,
the former treasurer of United Fire, recalls seeing Epstein two or three times at the company. He
and another executive say they had direct dealing with Epstein over the finances. And in his
deposition of 1989, Epstein stated that he was the one who executed “all” Hoffenberg’s
instructions to buy and sell the stock. He called it “making the orders.” He could not recall
whether he had chosen the brokers used.
To win approval from the Illinois insurance regulators for Towers’s acquisition of the
companies, Hoffenberg promised to inject $3 million of new capital into them. In fact, in his
grand-jury testimony Hoffenberg claimed that he, his chief operating officer, Mitchell Brater,
and Epstein came up with a scheme to steal $3 million of the insurance companies’ bonds to buy
Pan Am and Emery stock. “Jeffrey Epstein and Mitch Brater arranged the various brokerage
accounts for the bonds to be placed with in New York, and I think one in Chicago, Rodman &
Renshaw,” Hoffenberg reportedly said. Then, said Hoffenberg, while making it appear as though
they were investing the bonds in much safer financial instruments, they used them as collateral to
buy the stock. “Epstein was the person in charge of the transactions, and Mitchell Brater was
assisting him with it in coordination on behalf of the insurance companies’ money,” Hoffenberg
claimed at the time.
At one point, according to Hoffenberg, a broker forged the documents necessary for a $1.8
million check to be written on insurance-company funds. The check was used to buy more stock
in the takeover targets. Meanwhile, in order to throw the insurance regulators off, the $1.8
million was reported as being safely invested in a money-market account.
United Fire’s former chief financial officer Daniel Payton confirms part of Hoffenberg’s
account. He says he recalls making one or two telephone calls to Epstein (at Hoffenberg’s
direction) about the missing bonds. “He said, ‘Oh, yeah, they still exist.’ But we found out later
that he had sold those assets … leveraged them … [and] used some margin account to take some
positions in … Emery and Pan Am,” says Payton.
Epstein’s extraordinary creativity was, according to Hoffenberg, responsible for the purchase by
the insurance companies of a $500,000 bond, with no money down. “Epstein created a great
scheme to purchase a $500,000 treasury bond that would not be shown … [as] margined or
collateralized,” he reportedly told the grand jury. “It looked like it was free and clear but it
actually wasn’t,” he said.
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Epstein has denied he ever had any dealings with anyone from the insurance companies. But
Richard Allen says he recalls talking to Epstein at Hoffenberg’s direction and telling him it was
urgent they retrieve the missing bonds for a state examination. According to Allen, Epstein said,
“We’ll get them back.” He had “kind of a flippant attitude,” says Allen. “They never came
back.”
Epstein, according to Hoffenberg, also came up with a scheme to manipulate the price of Emery
Freight stock in an attempt to minimize the losses that occurred when Hoffenberg’s bid went
wrong and the share price began to fall. This was alleged to have involved multiple clients’
accounts controlled by Epstein.
Eventually, in 1991, insurance regulators in Illinois sued Hoffenberg. He settled the case, and
Epstein, who was only a paid consultant, was never deposed or accused of any wrongdoing.
Barry Gross, the attorney who was handling the suit for the regulators, says of Epstein, “He was
very elusive…. It was hard to really track him down. There were a substantial number of checks
for significant dollars that were paid to him, I remember…. He was this character we never got a
handle on. Again we presumed that he was involved with the Pan Am and Emery run that
Hoffenberg made, but we never got a chance to depose him.”
“From the government’s discovery in the main sentencing against Hoffenberg it would seem the
government was perhaps a bit lazy,” says David Lewis, who represented Mitchell Brater. “They
went for what they knew they could get … and that was the fraudulent promissory notes [i.e., the
much larger and unrelated part of Hoffenberg’s fraud, based in New York State]…. What they
couldn’t get, they didn’t bother with.”
Another lawyer involved in the criminal prosecution of Hoffenberg says, “In a criminal
investigation like that, when there is a guilty plea, to be quick and dirty about it, discovery is
always incomplete…. They don’t have to line up witnesses; they don’t have to learn every fact
that might come out on cross-examination.”
Epstein was involved with Hoffenberg in other questionable transactions. Financial records show
that in 1988 Epstein invested $1.6 million in Riddell Sports Inc., a company that manufactures
football helmets. Among his co-investors were the theater mogul Robert Nederlander and
attorney Leonard Toboroff. A source close to this transaction claims that Epstein told
Nederlander and Toboroff that he had raised his share of the money from a Swiss banker, whose
identity they could not be allowed to know. But Hoffenberg has claimed the money came from
him, and Towers’s financial statements for that year show a loan to Epstein of $400,000.
(Epstein has said he can’t remember the details and has disputed the accuracy of the Towers
financial reports.)
Around the same time, Nederlander and Toboroff let Epstein come in with them on a scheme to
make money out of Pennwalt, a Pennsylvania chemical company. The plan was to group together
with two other parties to take a substantial declared position in the stock. According to a source,
Epstein was supposed to help Nederlander and Toboroff raise $15 million. He seemed to fail to
find other investors, say those familiar with the deal. (Epstein has said he was merely an
investor.) He invested $1 million, which he told his co-investors was his own money. But in his
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1989 deposition he said that he put in only $300,000 of his own money. Where did the rest come
from? Hoffenberg has said it came from him, in a loan that Nederlander and Toboroff didn’t
know about.
Two things happened that alarmed Nederlander and Toboroff. After the group signaled a
possible takeover, the Pennwalt management threatened to sue the would-be raiders. Epstein was
reluctant initially to give a deposition about his share of the money, telling Toboroff there were
“reasons” he didn’t want to. Then, after the opportunity for new investors was closed, coinvestors
recall Epstein announcing that he’d found one at last: Dick Snyder, then C.E.O. of the
publisher Simon & Schuster, who wanted to put up approximately $500,000. (Neither Epstein
nor Snyder can now recall the investment. Yet in the 1989 deposition Epstein said that he had
recruited Snyder, whom he had met socially, into the deal.)
According to a source, Toboroff and Nederlander told Epstein that Snyder was too late, but,
without their realizing it, Hoffenberg has claimed, Snyder wrote a check to Hoffenberg and
bought out some of his investment. But then Snyder wanted out.
“Nederlander started to get these irate calls from [Snyder,] who wasn’t part of the deal, saying he
was owed all this money,” says someone close to the deal. Toboroff and Nederlander were
baffled.
Eventually, a source close to Hoffenberg says, Hoffenberg paid Snyder off.
Just as Nederlander and Toboroff were growing wary of Epstein, he became increasingly
involved with Leslie Wexner, whom he had met through insurance executive Robert Meister and
his late wife. Epstein has told people that he met Wexner in 1986 in Palm Beach, and that he
won his confidence by persuading him not to invest in the stock market, just as the 1987 crash
was approaching. His story has subsequently changed. When asked if Wexner knew about his
connection to Hoffenberg, Epstein said that he began working for Wexner in 1989, and that “it
was certainly not the same time.”
Wherever and whenever it was that Epstein and Wexner actually met, there was an immediate
and strong personal chemistry. Wexner says he thinks Epstein is “very smart with a combination
of excellent judgment and unusually high standards. Also, he is always a most loyal friend.”
Sources say Epstein proved that he could be useful to Wexner as well, with “fresh” ideas about
investments. “Wexner had a couple of bad investments, and Jeffrey cleaned those up right
away,” says a former associate of Epstein’s.
Before he signed on with Wexner, Epstein had several meetings with Harold Levin, then head of
Wexner Investments, in which he enunciated ideas about currencies that Levin found
incomprehensible. “In fact,” says someone who used to work very closely with Wexner, “almost
everyone at the Limited wondered who Epstein was; he literally came out of nowhere.”
“Everyone was mystified as to what his appeal was,” says Robert Morosky, a former vicechairman
of the Limited.
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Much of Epstein’s work is related to cleaning up, tightening budgets, and efficiencies. One
person who worked for Wexner and who saw a contract drawn up between the two men says
Epstein is involved in “everything, not just a little here, a little there. Everything!” In addition, he
says, “Wexner likes having a hatchet man…. Whenever there is dirty work to be done he’d stick
Jeffrey on it…. He has a reputation for being ruthless but he gets the job done.”
Epstein has evidently been asked to fire personal-staff members when needed. “He was that
mysterious person that everyone was scared to death of,” says a former employee.
Meanwhile, he is also less than popular with some people outside Wexner’s company with
whom he now deals. “He ‘inserted’ himself into the construction process of Leslie Wexner’s
yacht…. That resulted in litigation down the road between Mr. Wexner and the shipyard that
eventually built the vessel,” says Lars Forsberg, a lawyer whose firm at the time, Dickerson and
Reily, was hired to deal with litigation stemming from the construction of Wexner’s Limitless—
at 315 feet, one of the largest private yachts in the world. Evidently, Epstein stalled on paying
Dickerson and Reily for its work. “It’s probably once or twice in my legal career that I’ve had to
sue a client for payment of services that he’d requested and we’d performed … without issue on
the performance,” says Forsberg. In the end the matter was settled, but Epstein claims he now
has no recollection of it.
The incident is one of a number of disputes Epstein has become embroiled in. Some are for sums
so tiny as to be baffling; for instance, Epstein sued investment adviser Herbert Glass, who sold
him the Palm Beach house in 1990, for $13,444—Epstein claimed this was owed him for
furnishings removed by Glass.
In 1998 the U.S. Attorney’s Office sued Epstein for illegally subletting the former home of the
deputy consul general of Iran to attorney Ivan Fisher and others. Epstein paid $15,000 a month in
rent to the State Department, but he charged Fisher and his colleagues $20,000. Though the exact
terms of the agreement are sealed, the court ruled against Epstein.
Wexner offers some insight into his friend’s combative style. “Many times people confuse
winning and losing,” Wexner says. “Jeffrey has the unusual quality of knowing when he is
winning. Whether in conversations or negotiations, he always stands back and lets the other
person determine the style and manner of the conversation or negotiation. And then he responds
in their style. Jeffrey sees it in chivalrous terms. He does not pick a fight, but if there is a fight,
he will let you choose your weapon.”
One case is rather more serious. Currently, Citibank is suing Epstein for defaulting on loans from
its private-banking arm for $20 million. Epstein claims that Citibank “fraudulently induced” him
into borrowing the money for investments. Citibank disputes this charge.
The legal papers for another case offer a rare window into Epstein’s finances. In 1995, Epstein
stopped paying rent to his landlord, the nonprofit Municipal Arts Society, for his office in the
Villard House. He claimed that they were breaking the terms of the lease by not letting his staff
in at night. The case was eventually settled. However, one of the papers filed in this dispute is
Epstein’s financial statement for 1988, in which he claimed to be worth $20 million. He listed
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that he owned $7 million in securities, $1 million in cash, zero in residential property (although
he told sources that he had already bought the home in Palm Beach), and $11 million in other
assets, including his investment in Riddell. A co-investor in Riddell says: “The company had
been bought with a huge amount of debt, and it wasn’t public, so it was meaningless to attach a
figure like that to it … the price it cost was about $1.2 million.” The co-investors bought out
Epstein’s share in Riddell in 1995 for approximately $3 million. At that time, when Epstein was
asked, as a routine matter, to sign a paper guaranteeing he had access to a few million dollars in
case of any subsequent disputes over the sale price, Wexner signed for him. Epstein has
explained that this was because the co-investors wanted an indemnity against being sued by
Wexner. One of the investors calls this “bullshit.”
Epstein’s appointment to the board of New York’s Rockefeller University in 2000 brought him
into greater social prominence. Boasting such social names as Nancy Kissinger, Brooke Astor,
and Robert Bass, the board also includes such pre-eminent scientists as Nobel laureate Joseph
Goldstein. “Epstein was thrilled to be elected,” says someone who knows him.
After one term Epstein resigned. According to New York magazine, this was because he didn’t
like to wear a suit to meetings. A spokesperson for the Rockefeller board says Epstein left
because he had insufficient time to commit; a board member recalls that he was “arrogant” and
“not a good fit.” The spokesperson admits that it is “infrequent” for board members not to be
renominated after only one term.
Still, the recent spate of publicity Epstein has inspired does not seem to have fazed him. In
November he was spotted in the front row of the Victoria’s Secret fashion show at New York’s
Lexington Avenue Armory; around the same time the usual coterie of friends and beautiful
women were whisked off to Little St. James (which he tells people has been renamed Little St.
Jeff) for a long weekend.
Thanks to Epstein’s introductions, says Martin Nowak, the biologist finds himself moving from
Princeton to Harvard, where he is assuming the joint position of professor of mathematics and
professor of biology. Epstein has pledged at least $25 million to Harvard to create the Epstein
Program for Mathematical Biology and Evolutionary Dynamics, and Epstein will have an office
at the university. The program will be dedicated to searching for nature’s algorithms, a pursuit
that is a specialty of Nowak’s. For Epstein this must be the summit of everything he has worked
toward: he has been seen proudly displaying Harvard president Larry Summers’s letter of
commitment as if he can’t quite believe it is real. He says he was reluctant to have his name
attached to the program, but Summers persuaded him. He rang his mentor Wexner about it, and
Wexner told him it was all right.
An insatiable, restless soul, always on the move, Epstein builds a tremendous amount of
downtime into his hectic work schedule. Yet there is something almost programmed about his
relaxation: it’s as if even pleasure has to be measured in terms of self-improvement. Nowak says
that, when he goes to stay with Epstein in the Caribbean, they’ll get up at six and, as the sun
rises, have three-hour conversations about theoretical physics. “Then he’ll go off and do some
work, re-appear, and we’ll talk some more.”
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Another person who went to the island with Epstein, Maxwell, and several beautiful women
remembers that the women “sat around one night teasing him about the kinds of grasping women
who might want to date him. He was amused by the idea…. He’s like a king in his own world.”
Many people comment there is something innocent, almost childlike about Jeffrey Epstein. They
see this as refreshing, given the sophistication of his surroundings. Alan Dershowitz says that, as
he was getting to know Epstein, his wife asked him if he would still be close to him if Epstein
suddenly filed for bankruptcy. Dershowitz says he replied, “Absolutely. I would be as interested
in him as a friend if we had hamburgers on the boardwalk in Coney Island and talked about his
ideas.”
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EXHIBIT 9
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4/15/2019 Alan Dershowitz says he's still advising Jeffrey Epstein - Axios
Alan Dershowitz says he's still advising Jeffrey Epstein
Alan Dershowitz still provides legal advice to serial pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, he confirmed to Axios.
What he's saying: "He has called me a couple of times about legal issues, because I'm still technically
his lawyer," Dershowitz told me in a phone interview on Saturday. "But I haven't had any social, or any
other kind of contact. ... You never stop being a person's lawyer."
Background: Dershowitz helped Epstein get a sweetheart plea deal from then-U.S. Attorney
Alexander Acosta (now Donald Trump's labor secretary and a rumored long-shot contender for attorney
general).
A bombshell Miami Herald investigative series last week highlighted for the first time the extent of
Epstein's alleged crimes and the soft treatment he received from federal prosecutors.
The Palm Beach multimillionaire would "serve just 13 months in the county jail, but the deal —
called a non-prosecution agreement — essentially shut down an ongoing FBI probe into whether
there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein’s sex crimes,"
according to a Miami Herald examination of thousands of emails, court documents and FBI
records.
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4/15/2019 Alan Dershowitz says he's still advising Jeffrey Epstein - Axios
Dozens of women alleged that Epstein molested and raped them when they were underaged using a
sophisticated human trafficking network. A civil trial is scheduled to begin on Tuesday in Palm Beach
County that may finally let these women tell their stories in court.
Behind the scenes: While he was allegedly raping teenage girls, Epstein cultivated cozy relationships
with America's elites.
Bill Clinton flew on Epstein's plane, nicknamed the "Lolita Express," numerous times, according to
flight logs.
And Donald Trump, in a profile with New York magazine written several years before the police
caught up with Epstein, praised his friend as a "terrific guy." "It is even said that he likes beautiful
women as much as I do," Trump said of Epstein, "and many of them are on the younger side."
Dershowitz was also friendly with Epstein before the broader public knew he was a pedophile.
Dershowitz confirmed to me that he received a massage at Epstein's Palm Beach home, adding
that the woman who provided it was of legal age.
"What happened was I, um, he lent us, this was well before any of this thing came out, he lent us
his house once. And I was there, my grandchildren were there, my daughter was there, and we all
got massages."
"And, um, it was therapeutic. I had a therapeutic massage with an old old Russian, but I never
never ... and that was part of when we had his house for about a week during I think it was
Christmas vacation."
"Believe me, if I had known that anything improper had ever taken place in that house, I never
would have allowed my children, my grandchildren, my wife, my daughter-in-law, my son, to have
spent time there. I can tell you categorically there were no inappropriate pictures, no
inappropriate anythings. It was like any other house."
One of Epstein's accusers, Virginia Roberts, has claimed Dershowitz had sex with her when she was
underage. Dershowitz has denied the allegation and told the Miami Herald "the story was 100 percent
flatly categorically made-up" so "she could get money."
Go deeper: Trump defender Dershowitz shunned by Martha's Vineyard
https://www.axios.com/alan-dershowitz-jeffrey-epstein-legal-advice-1a13ad59-a718-46c9-9813-11231604a387.html 2/3
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SEXUAL ASSAULT
Show less
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4/9/2019 Opinion | Jeffrey Epstein’s Attorneys: A Fair Plea Deal - The New York Times
LETTER
Jeffrey Epstein’s
Attorneys: A Fair
Plea Deal
The attorneys for a man accused of sexual abuse of young women defend the
prosecutors’ decision to drop federal charges against him.
March 4, 2019
To the Editor:
Re “The Cowardly Labor Secretary” (editorial, March 3):
Your editorial’s conclusions are in profound conflict with the reality as we, Jeffrey Epstein’s
current and former lawyers, knew it.
When he was United States attorney for the Southern District of Florida in 2007, Alexander
Acosta, the current labor secretary, oversaw a plea deal for Mr. Epstein involving charges of
solicitation of prostitution involving young women. Your underlying premise is that Mr. Acosta
had capitulated and not filed federal charges because Mr. Epstein had a “high-priced defense
team.”
This was categorically denied by the Southern District’s then first assistant, Jeffrey H. Sloman, in
an Op-Ed article in The Miami Herald on Feb. 15. Mr. Sloman correctly represented the existence
of “significant legal impediments to [federally] prosecuting” what was a quintessentially state case.
He also correctly represented that the government had achieved its principal objectives — a felony
plea, incarceration, millions of dollars in restitution and monetary settlements, and lifetime sex
offender registration — through its agreement with Mr. Epstein. That agreement was reviewed at
multiple levels of the Justice Department. An agreement rather than a trial is how over 97
percent of federal cases get resolved, through negotiations by two teams of experienced
professionals. The case lacked the credible and compelling proof that is required by federal
criminal statutes.
That the guilty plea was required in a state, not federal, court reflected the absence of evidence
that Mr. Epstein used the internet, traveled to a location away from his home for the purpose of
having illegal sex, commercially trafficked women to others, engaged in force, fraud or coercion,
used drugs or alcohol to entice young women who came to his house to exchange sexual massages
for money, possessed child pornography or in other ways violated federal law.
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Case 1:19-cv-03377 Document 1-10 Filed 04/16/19 Page 3 of 3
The number of young women involved in the investigation has been vastly exaggerated, there was
no “international sex-trafficking operation” and there was never evidence that Mr. Epstein “hosted
sex parties” at his home.
4/9/2019 Opinion | Jeffrey Epstein’s Attorneys: A Fair Plea Deal - The New York Times
You have 3 free articles remaining.
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Finally, Mr. Epstein has gone to prison and made enormous monetary settlements relying on his
negotiated agreement. He is entitled to finality like every other defendant.
Kenneth W. Starr
Martin G. Weinberg
Jack Goldberger
Lilly Ann Sanchez
A version of this article appears in print on March 5, 2019, on Page A26 of the New York edition with the headline: Jeffrey Epstein’s
Attorneys: A Fair Plea Deal
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/opinion/letters/jeffrey-epstein.html 2/2
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4/8/2019 Prof. Dershowitz, Tell Me How You Really Feel | Law.com
Prof. Dershowitz, Tell Me How You
Really Feel
Harvard's legendary law professor chats with the Careerist about the recent sex allegations, his enemies and the
"cesspool."
By Vivia Chen | January 15, 2015 at 06:19 PM | Originally published on The American Lawyer
(Alan Dershowitz)
Alan Dershowitz, arguably the most famous—and maybe infamous—law professor in the
land, wants to set the record straight. When he heard that I was writing about his
relationship with billionaire Jeffrey Epstein and the related allegation that Dershowitz
engaged in sex with a minor, he tracked me down to tell his side of the story.
The backdrop: Dershowitz was part of a legal team that had negotiated a plea deal in
2008 in which Epstein pleaded guilty to felony charges in Florida for soliciting prostitution
from a minor. Epstein served 13 months in prison but was spared federal charges under
the deal. Last December, lawyers Bradley Edwards and Paul Cassellfiled suit against
the U.S. government, arguing that the plea deal violated the rights of Epstein’s alleged
sex victims; the suit also alleges that Dershowitz had sex with one of the victims when
she was under age. Dershowitz has denied all the allegations, and Edwards and Cassell
have filed a defamation suit against Dershowitz for calling them liars.
The following are excerpts from my two phone conversations with Dershowitz:
From what I’ve read, your relationship with Epstein seemed chummy. You
socialized with him and you and your family stayed at his various homes. Isn’t it a
bad idea for a lawyer to be so close to a notorious client?
Let me tell you how I met him. I was introduced to him by Lady de Rothschild as an
academic colleague. He was friendly with Larry Summers . . . He was in the process of
contributing $50 million to Harvard for evolutionary biology.
So Epstein was friendly with all sorts of Harvard muckety-mucks.
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4/8/2019 Prof. Dershowitz, Tell Me How You Really Feel | Law.com
The fact that he was giving money didn’t hurt. We went to events that he was involved in
but none of us suspected that he had another side until later. Jeffrey loved academics.
My conversations with him were only about academic subjects. We never discussed
females or our social life.
Did your relationship change with Epstein when you took him on as a client?
Virtually all my social contact with him was of an academic nature, and it was prior to the
time he was indicted. My relationship with him was entirely professional. It is a total bum
rap to say that I “cavorted” with him or was “chummy” with him. I teach my students
never, never get too close to clients—and certainly don’t do anything improper with them.
The suit says that Jane Doe No. 3 was forced to have sex with you, Prince Andrew
and “many other powerful men,” including unnamed politicians, foreign presidents
and world leaders. Why were you and the Prince singled out by name?
They want to void the plea agreement and needed to find a lawyer who knew Epstein
before [the indictment], and had been on his island, his home in New Mexico, Palm
Beach. I fit the bill. It was lawyer profiling.
And the Prince?
They claimed that Prince Andrew was using his influence to get Epstein a better deal with
the government. What’s more laughable than suggesting that the U.S. Attorney would
listen to the Prince to go easy on Epstein!
Why bother responding if you think the allegations are so outrageous? Why not
just let the facts come out during the legal process?
I have to respond to everything. That’s the way I am. Imagine having an unblemished
personal life then reading graffiti scrawled on the bathroom door that gets picked up in
every paper based on the assertions of a woman who’s a serial liar.
Brad Edwards, one of the lawyers bringing this suit, has a history of legal
entanglement with Epstein, as does his former partner Scott Rothstein, who’s now
in prison for his role in a Ponzi scheme. But the other lawyer in this case, Paul
Cassell, is a former federal judge and a law professor. Why is he getting involved?
Everyone is shocked that he would be part of this. I think he’s always hated me because
I’m his opposite. I’m the conventional liberal he hates: I’m against the death penalty, I’m
pro abortion rights, pro gun control.
Seems risky to bring a lawsuit for just ideological differences.
No one can understand Cassell’s motive. Either he will be disbarred or I will be. And if I
knowingly had sex with a sex slave then I would deserve disbarment.
What about the reaction? Do you feel you’ve been treated fairly by the press and
the public?
I’ve been treated particularly harshly by lawyers and law professors. They are so quick to
say that I might be guilty. They’re getting too much pleasure out of this. There’s a dose of
schadenfreude.
Why do you think people like getting you upset?
I’m controversial and more famous than they are. There’s a lot of jealousy.
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4/8/2019 Prof. Dershowitz, Tell Me How You Really Feel | Law.com
I gather you’re talking about legal academia.
Yes, it’s a cesspool of jealousy. People in it lack courage.
But you’re no stranger to harsh criticism. People weren’t exactly nominating you
for a justice award for getting O.J. Simpson and Claus von Bulow off the hook.
Some of the criticisms against me have been just. I’m a tough lawyer. But charging me
with one of the most heinous crimes is on a different level. I’ve never been attacked like
this. I don’t know any lawyer or professor who’s had these accusations waged against
them. It’s worse than what Clarence Darrow had to face.
You retired from Harvard Law School a year ago. Did you expect so much
excitement at this stage of your career?
This is an absolute shock. I’m living my little life here [in Florida, New York and Martha's
Vineyard]. I lead a boring life. I’ve been married to the same woman for 28 years. She
goes with me everywhere. People know that I won’t argue a case or give a speech
unless my wife travels with me. This is not the profile of someone who screws around.
You take all this very, very personally, don’t you?
Wouldn’t you? I’ve got two grandchildren in college and they are reading this about me.
This is the fight of my life.
Note: We have been in contact with Edwards and Cassell and hope to get their sides of
the story soon.
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An Epstein sex case is settled;
Dershowitz denies latest
allegation
BY JULIE K. BROWN
DECEMBER 19, 2018 8:30 PM, UPDATED DECEMBER 27, 2018 7:55 AM
Accused sex traffickers Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell have settled a federal civil lawsuit
filed by a woman who says she was ordered under threat of violence to have sex with them and
other influential individuals when she was in her early 20s, sources confirmed Wednesday.
Sarah Ransome, who now lives in Barcelona, claimed that she was recruited and trafficked for
sex by the pair in 2006 and 2007 — at the same time that Epstein, a wealthy New York hedge
fund manager, was under federal investigation for molesting dozens of underage girls at his
Palm Beach mansion.
Women who say they were victims of sexual abuse at the hands of Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein
want a judge to throw out his lenient plea deal. AP
According to a recent court transcript, among those people Ransome claims she was directed to
have sex with was Epstein’s lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, who helped negotiate a controversial plea
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deal that gave the eccentric multimillionaire — and co-conspirators employed by Epstein —
federal immunity in 2008.
Dershowitz, 80, told the Miami Herald that he has never met Ransome nor has he ever had sex
with her. He accused Ransome’s attorney, powerhouse lawyer David Boies, of inventing the
story and using her and another woman, Virginia Roberts, to frame him. Roberts asserted in a
federal court affidavit in 2015 that Epstein forced her to have sex with Dershowitz when she was
16 years old.
“I am the victim. David Boies and these women are the perpetrators,’’ Dershowitz said. “They
have willfully and deliberately concocted stories in order to make money — millions and
millions of dollars. And I will not rest until the entire story comes out,’’ said Dershowitz, a
professor at Harvard Law School and frequent Fox news guest commentator.
Nowhere in the court case or the transcript does Ransome or anyone else allege that Ransome
had sex with Dershowitz — only that she was directed to.
The Ransome settlement, which is confidential, comes two weeks after Epstein settled another
lawsuit in Palm Beach, filed by an attorney who represented several women who said they were
coerced into sex acts with Epstein when they were underage. As part of the settlement, Epstein,
65, issued an apology to Fort Lauderdale attorney Bradley Edwards, admitting that he leveled
false claims in a lawsuit as part of an effort to intimidate Edwards into abandoning his
aggressive advocacy for the women, who are now in their late 20s and early 30s.
The developments follow a series of stories published by the Miami Herald in late November
that detailed how state and federal prosecutors worked with Epstein’s lawyers to conceal the
extent of Epstein’s crimes, and secretly negotiated an unusual plea agreement that allowed him
to escape federal sex trafficking charges that could have sent him to prison for life. The
agreement, by design, was kept from his victims so that they could not appear at his sentencing.
Last week, more than two dozen lawmakers in Washington demanded a federal investigation
into that plea deal, which was negotiated, signed and sealed by former Miami U.S. Attorney
Alexander Acosta, now President Donald Trump’s secretary of labor.
Acosta has not commented on the Herald story or on the calls
for a probe into how he handled the Epstein case.
This week, a decade after defending Epstein, Dershowitz once
again found himself in the spotlight amid the new allegations,
mentioned briefly in a court filing on Nov. 28, and first
reported on Tuesday by the New York Daily News.
During a Nov. 7 hearing, Maxwell’s lawyer, Laura Menninger,
mentioned Dershowitz’s name as among those “third parties’’
that Ransome claims she was instructed to have sex with,
according to a transcript of the hearing obtained by the Herald.
On Tuesday, after the Daily News published its story,
Dershowitz lashed out in dozens of posts on Twitter,
denouncing Ransome as “delusional’’ and claiming that her
lawyer, Boies, was retaliating against him because Dershowitz
had filed a bar complaint against him.
Alan Dershowitz says he has never met
the woman who alleges in a lawsuit she
was ordered to have sex with influential
men, including the famous lawyer. John
Lamparski GETTY IMAGES/TNS
“Attorney David Boies threatened that unless I withdrew a bar
complaint I had filed against him for falsely accusing me of
sexual misconduct, he would find another woman to accuse me of similar misconduct. He has
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now found an unbalanced woman who has delusions of having sex tapes of Donald Trump,
Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton and other prominent figures,’’ Dershowitz said in a tweet.
Boies, best known for arguing on behalf of Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 Florida election
recount, responded in an interview with the Herald:
“[Dershowitz’s] charges are absurd. Either he has become totally unhinged or he thinks that if
he says things that are loud enough and crazy enough it will distract attention from what he has
done. There is no support — none — for what he says.’’
Ransome claimed that, in her early 20s, she was recruited to work as a masseuse for Epstein
who, in exchange, promised he would help her get into fashion design in New York, according to
her civil lawsuit, filed in January 2017. Epstein and Maxwell then kept her passport and
threatened to ruin her life and physically harm her if she didn’t have sex with them and others
in 2006 and 2007, Ransome said in the complaint.
The complaint alleges that this all occurred at the same time as Epstein’s lawyers were
negotiating with Acosta and other federal prosecutors for a deal to avoid federal sex trafficking
charges in connection with a scheme in which he lured underprivileged girls, mostly 13 to 16, to
his home in Palm Beach under the pretense that he would pay them $200 to $300 for massages.
Instead, police in Palm Beach found that he had been molesting and sexually abusing dozens of
girls between 2001 and 2007.
In this photograph, Virginia Roberts socializes with Prince Andrew as Jeffrey
Epstein associate Guislaine Maxwell stands in the background. Roberts claims she
was effectively used as a sex slave by Epstein. In that capacity she had sex with
the prince, Roberts says. The prince denied that. COURTESY OF VIRGINIA ROBERTS
Under the plea deal, known as a non-prosecution agreement, Epstein was allowed to plead
guilty in state court to two prostitution charges. He served 13 months in a private wing of the
Palm Beach County jail, where he was given liberal work release privileges. The deal also
quashed an FBI investigation into whether Epstein was operating an international sex
trafficking organization, the Herald found as part of its yearlong investigation.
“Even as [Epstein, Maxwell and other defendants] and their attorneys were busy arguing
Epstein’s innocence and publicly defaming his victims as liars...defendants merely changed
their location’’ from Palm Beach to “other places in the U.S. [including the Southern District of
New York] and abroad and brought them to Epstein’s mansion in New York City and his private
island in the Virgin Islands,’’ Ransome’s complaint alleged.
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Dershowitz, in interviews with the Herald, and in recent public statements, said he has never
met Ransome. He also said she initially tried to interest the New York Post in her story, but a
reporter whom he said he spoke with told him Ransome was not credible. He said he has a trove
of emails between Ransome and the reporter that prove she is a “lunatic.’’
“There are hundreds of emails in which she claimed to have sex with everybody in the world and
also claimed she has video of Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and others having sex
with underage girls — but she never ever accused me in these emails,’’ Dershowitz said.
The emails are under seal, he said, and therefore cannot be made public. Dershowitz said he has
asked the court to unseal them but his efforts thus far have been unsuccessful.
In the recent court transcript, however, it is Maxwell’s attorney, Laura Menninger — not
Ransome or her attorneys — who named Dershowitz.
“[Ransome] has alleged not only that my client [Maxwell] ran a sex trafficking organization but
she claims also that she was directed by my client and the Epstein defendants to have sex with
third parties, including Alan Dershowitz, for example,’’ Menninger said. “And so to the extent
my client or Mr. Dershowitz or anyone else is going to be asked about their private sexual
activity, I believe that would implicate their privacy rights...’’
Roberts, who now lives in Australia, said that Epstein ordered her to have sex with Dershowitz
six times, according to a 2015 affidavit, which was filed in connection with an unrelated Epstein
federal lawsuit.
At that time, Dershowitz launched a media blitz on TV asserting that Roberts made up the story.
He also called for Roberts’ lawyers — Edwards and University of Utah law professor Paul Cassell
— to be disbarred. The lawyers sued Dershowitz for defamation, and the case was settled last
year.
Dershowitz publicly declared he was vindicated after a federal judge ordered Roberts’ affidavit
stricken from the court record. But the judge did not address the veracity of her sexual
misconduct claims; he instead ruled that the affidavit was misplaced in a case not involving
Dershowitz.
Boies, whose firm represented Roberts pro bono, addressed Dershowitz’s longstanding
contention that he had been exonerated.
“Anytime in a lawsuit where you were the defendant and you paid the plaintiff $900,000 to
settle it — that’s a strange kind of vindication,’’ Boies said, asserting that Dershowitz paid that
amount as part of the defamation settlement with Edwards and Cassell.
In 2016, Dershowitz released a statement following what he said was “an independent
investigation’’ that had been conducted by former FBI Director Louis Freeh, who is now a
private consultant.
“Our investigation found no evidence to support the accusations of sexual misconduct against
Professor Dershowitz. In fact, in several instances, the evidence directly contradicted the
accusations made against him,’’ Freeh wrote.
Most of the court records in the Roberts case are sealed. In February, the Miami Herald filed a
motion in the Southern District of New York, seeking access to documents. The motion, which
was not opposed by Roberts, could shed more light on the full scope of Epstein’s crimes and
who was involved.
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The motion was denied. The Herald is appealing.
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