Dershowitz and victims' rights lawyers drop dueling defamation claims
Retired Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz and two victims’ rights lawyers have settled dueling defamation claims stemming from allegations in a court filing that Dershowitz had sex with a minor.
The lawyers announced the defamation settlement in a statement on Friday, report the Careerist, Above the Law, Reuters and Politico. The statement also says the sexual misconduct allegations against Dershowitz have been withdrawn from all court filings.
In a separate statement, former FBI director Louis Freeh said he had supervised an investigation of the sexual misconduct claim against Dershowitz, and the probe found no evidence to support the allegations. In fact, Freeh said, in several instances the evidence directly contradicted the accusations against Dershowitz.
The sexual misconduct claim was made in a suit accusing the Justice Department of violating the rights of alleged victims of wealthy money manager Jeffrey Epstein, who was accused of paying underage girls to give him sexual massages. Dershowitz had represented Epstein and helped negotiate a federal nonprosecution agreement. The woman who accused Dershowitz said Epstein helped arrange for Dershowitz to have sex with her while a minor. The woman made the same claim against Britain’s Prince Andrew, who has also denied the allegation.
Lawyers Bradley Edwards and Paul Cassell had filed the court document in which the woman made the accusations. They were also first to file a defamation suit over Dershowitz’s claim that they failed to properly investigation the allegation before including it in a 2014 pleading. Dershowitz filed a counterclaim that said Edwards and Cassell defamed him by making the abuse claim.
The joint statement said Edwards and Cassell “acknowledge that it was a mistake to have filed sexual misconduct accusations against Dershowitz,” though they maintain they filed the allegation in good faith and performed the necessary due diligence.
For his part, Dershowitz is withdrawing allegations that Edwards and Cassell acted unethically. He “completely denies” sexual misconduct, while not disputing that the woman may have been the victim of misconduct with someone else.
The statement says Dershowitz relies on travel and other records to show he couldn’t have been present when the alleged misconduct occurred. “He has also produced other evidence that he relies upon to refute the credibility of the allegations against him,” the statement says.
Though the joint statement says it was “a mistake” for Edwards and Cassell to file the misconduct allegations against Dershowitz, a court filing (PDF) in the defamation suit was more equivocal, the stories point out. Dershowitz’s accuser “reaffirms her allegations” and the withdrawal of court filings shouldn’t be constructed as an acknowledgement by Edwards and Cassell that the accuser was mistaken, the court filing says.
Edwards and Cassell do acknowledge the accusations were “a tactical mistake” because they caused delay and became “a major distraction,” the court filing says.
Dershowitz told the Careerist that the accuser’s lawyers can’t admit she was wrong. “They can’t take back the claims because that could be used against her on a perjury indictment,” Dershowitz said. “That would mean throwing her under the bus.”
Dershowitz told Politico he felt vindicated. “I have endured five months of waterboarding, which has taken a toll on me and my friends and family,” he said. “I’m glad this chapter is over and I can go on and try to do other good things in my life.”
Dershowitz said he has an unblemished record, and the allegations against him “were not only false but disprovable to a mathematical certainty.”
Edwards and Cassell issued a statement Sunday calling Dershowitz’s comments to the media “at best misleading,” the Careerist reports. “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,” they wrote.
