- A slew of court documents related to
Jeffrey Epstein andGhislaine Maxwell were unsealed in federal court Friday. - They include testimony from Virginia Roberts Giuffre accusing former Harvard Law professor
Alan Dershowitz of having sex with her while she was sex trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's direction. - Dershowitz has adamantly denied the allegations over the years, and on Friday again tried to defend himself in a statement to Insider.
- "
Virginia Giuffre is a serial liar who has deliberately made up stories about me and others in the hopes of cashing in on millions of dollars," he said. - Giuffre and Dershowitz are involved in a thicket of defamation lawsuits stemming from him previously calling her a liar over the allegations.
Former Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz is once again denying that he had sex with Virginia Giuffre, who for years has maintained that accused sex traffickers Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell directed her to sleep with him while she was 17 years old.
Dershowitz's denial follows the release of another batch of court documents from a 2015 defamation suit between Giuffre and Ghislaine Maxwell, unsealed Thursday night.
Giuffre has publicly accused Epstein and Maxwell of sex-trafficking her starting in 2000. Maxwell has denied Giuffre's claims, which sparked the lawsuit. She has claimed that she had sex with Dershowitz on multiple occasions.
Dershowitz and Giuffre are also suing each other for defamation — a legal battle that was sparked in 2019 when Dershowitz denied the allegations and called Giuffre a liar. That lawsuit has spawned several counter-suits between the two and their respective lawyers.
Both Giuffre and Dershowitz have fought to get the documents unsealed — but for different reasons.
Giuffre has fought to expose what she says was a wide-ranging sex trafficking ring run by Epstein and Maxwell, which implicates a number of powerful people. Dershowitz has said the documents prove Giuffre is dishonest.
"I am gratified that Judge Loretta Preska has ordered the unsealing of documents in the Maxwell case," Dershowitz wrote in his statement. "I have been requesting the unsealing of all documents, because I have nothing to hide. I did absolutely nothing wrong, and the documents contain proof of my total innocence."
A representative for Giuffre says the new documents change nothing.
"We have been to this rodeo before with Alan Dershowitz," the representative said. "He has been recycling the same fantasies of his version of the truth for years."
—Alan Dershowitz (@AlanDersh) July 31, 2020
Dershowitz, who became a household name when he defended OJ Simpson in his murder trial, had been friends with Epstein in the late 1990s and early 200s. He was also part of Epstein's legal team that brokered the lenient plea deal in 2008 that allowed the convicted sex offender to spend just 13 months in county jail while working from home for days.
Epstein died by suicide last August in a federal jail while awaiting trial on charges of sex-trafficking.
Giuffre and Dershowitz both claim the documents prove them right
Most of Giuffre's allegations against powerful men, including Dershowitz, were known prior to the document dump on Thursday. Many of the details were unveiled in a 2,000-page document dump from the same case a year ago, which also led Dershowitz to reiterate his claim that Giuffre was dishonest.
Giuffre has said she was 17 when Maxwell picked her up from now-President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago spa, where she worked at the time. She was hired as a masseuse for Epstein but has said she was groomed by Maxwell to have sex with him and others, including financier Glenn Dubin, model scout Jean Luc Brunel, and former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson.
Dubin, Brunel, and Richardson have also denied the allegations.
Maxwell was arrested on July 2 on charges related to the procuring and
In his statement Friday, Dershowitz attempted to paint Giuffre as a liar out to get money from wealthy men
He accused her of saying she was younger than she was when she met Maxwell and Epstein, about meeting Al and Tipper Gore on Epstein's private island, and about President Bill Clinton being flown to the island by Maxwell piloting a helicopter.
"She has roiled three continents with her accusations against politicians and other high profile individuals and yet the media has declined to conduct the kind of investigative reporting that it has rightfully done with regard to other accusers," Dershowitz said. "I welcome the unsealing of more records and a thorough investigation of all the allegations, and I am confident they will prove what I already know for certainty: that Virginia Giuffre is a serial liar who has deliberately made up stories about me and others in the hopes of cashing in on millions of dollars."
This article has been updated.
- Read more:
- Newly unveiled emails between Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell shows how the 2 worked together to discredit his accusers
- Read Virginia Giuffre's unsealed deposition where she accuses Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell of sex-trafficking her
- A sexual misconduct allegation from one of Jeffrey Epstein's victims sparked a quiet war between two of America's most powerful lawyers. Now it's about to blow up.
- Alan Dershowitz says a new memoir from his accuser proves his innocence, but she's not dropping her lawsuit against him