Former Harvard Law professor and celebrity defense attorney Alan Dershowitz has consistently denied allegations that he took part in sexual assaults at parties held by deceased sex-trafficking billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.
And, according to The Daily Beast, recently released documents show that he defended himself partly by pointing out how many of his fellow academics at Harvard also fit the description a lawyer representing one of the victims says applies to him.
This was part of a lawsuit filed by Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein's most notorious victims, who claims she was passed around and sexually assaulted by people within Epstein's network. An extensive trove of documents related to the case, potentially including information about Epstein's associates, is being released.
"In a declaration filed in court, Harvard lawyer Alan Dershowitz — who was fighting claims of abuse from Giuffre — stated, 'I never had sexual contact with Ms. Giuffre of any kind, and, to my knowledge, I never even met her until her deposition in 2016,'" reported the Daily Beast.
"Dershowitz went on to address Giuffre’s prior claims that 'academicians' linked to Epstein assaulted her and targeted claims from one of her lawyers, Paul Cassell."
“As Mr. Cassell is well aware, Jeffrey Epstein was heavily involved in funding academic research at Harvard and kept an office there, and he was consequently friendly with many academics, including David Gergen, [MIT’s] Marvin Minsky, Larry Summers, Stephen Kosslyn, Henry Rosovsky, Howard Gardner, and Stephen Jay Gould, among others,” said Dershowitz.
“Many of these academics engaged in the same behavior that apparently led Mr. Cassell to believe Ms. Giuffre’s allegations that I had abused her.”
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Dershowitz, who was a member of former President Donald Trump's defense team during his first impeachment trial, previously sued Netflix over a documentary that aired the claim Giuffre was loaned out by Epstein to Dershowitz, among others, for sex. The retired Harvard professor has never been criminally charged with any offense in connection with the Epstein trafficking.
Epstein, who previously escaped serious charges with a controversial plea deal in 2008, was re-arrested in 2019 under a more comprehensive case, but was found dead by suicide in his Manhattan cell before he could stand trial, a matter that has spawned numerous conspiracy theories.
His close associate and former girlfriend, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for assisting in the sex crimes.
