Alan Dershowitz says he wishes his name wasn't redacted from Ghislaine Maxwell's newly unsealed 2016 deposition.- He told Insider it should have never been redacted in the first place.
- Dershowitz has long held that unsealing everything in the lawsuit between Maxwell and Virginia Giuffre would prove his innocence of a sexual misconduct accusation from Giuffre, who's also accused Maxwell and
Jeffrey Epstein of misconduct. - The 418-page deposition also redacts other boldfaced names, like those of Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew, but they are easily identifiable.
Alan Dershowitz is upset his name doesn't appear in Ghislaine Maxwell's newly unsealed deposition.
He told Insider it should have never been redacted from the 418-page document.
"I had told the court over and over again, I want my name unredacted," Dershowitz said. "You can go to court and tell the court, you have my permission to have my name unredacted. I don't want anything redacted."
A transcript of a deposition, taken in 2016, was unsealed Thursday morning as part of a long-running civil lawsuit between Maxwell and Virginia Giuffre. Giuffre has accused Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein, and Dershowitz of sexual misconduct, suing Maxwell for defamation when she denied the accusations. A representative for Giuffre previously told Insider the case has been helpful in exposing Epstein and Maxwell's alleged sex-trafficking operation.
Dershowitz, the former Harvard Law professor and famous defense lawyer who's represented Epstein, OJ Simpson, and even President Donald Trump in his impeachment hearings earlier this year, has long held that unsealing everything from the case would prove his innocence in his own defamation case with Giuffre.
After Giuffre in 2014 accused Dershowitz of having sex with her while she was Epstein's sex slave, Dershowitz called her a liar, leading her to sue him for defamation. Dershowitz has countersued Giuffre, leading to a thicket of ongoing lawsuits between the two and their lawyers.
Dershowitz's name is one of many redacted from Maxwell's deposition, including those of Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew. As Slate pointed out, however, many of the names are readily identifiable by looking at the document's index.
It's not clear why Dershowitz's name is redacted in the first place. Lawyers for Giuffre and Maxwell, who have been arguing in court for months over which material to redact, did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
"It should never have never been redacted in the first place," Dershowitz told Insider.
Later Thursday, Imran H. Ansari, a lawyer representing Dershowitz in the case, filed a motion asking for the deposition transcript to be refiled without his name redacted.
"As [nonparties] have been afforded the ability to enjoy the cloak of confidentiality gained by redaction, Professor Dershowitz, who has tirelessly advocated for full transparency and fought for the unsealing of material and information in this case, should be afforded the ability to have his name displayed where it appears, without redaction, as he so strongly desires," Ansari wrote. "As Professor Dershowitz has continually stated: He has nothing to hide."
Dershowitz says Giuffre is a fabulist, pointing to her claim that she dined on Jeffrey Epstein's private island with Clinton and Maxwell. In her deposition, Maxwell says the claim was "a flat out total fabrication and lie."
"She also apparently made the false claim that Clinton was on the island," Dershowitz said. "If she's made up a false accusation against Bill Clinton, then she should be indicted for perjury."
Dershowitz pointed out that federal prosecutors at the Southern District of New York have not relied on Giuffre's claims for their charges against Epstein or Maxwell. Dershowitz was one of Epstein's lawyers who negotiated his controversial plea deal in 2008, after the financier was investigated for having sex with underage girls. Epstein was charged by the SDNY prosecutors in 2019 on sex-trafficking charges and died in his jail cell before the case went to trial.
Maxwell is currently in jail while awaiting trial on her own set of charges. SDNY prosecutors indicted her earlier this year, accusing her of grooming young girls, engaging in sex acts with them herself, and lying about her involvement with Epstein in the 2016 deposition.
- Read more:
- 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.
- 418 pages of Ghislaine Maxwell testimony shows her dodging loads of questions about Jeffrey Epstein, Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, and more. Here are the highlights.
- 418 pages of testimony from Ghislaine Maxwell about Jeffrey Epstein were just made public — here's the full document
- Alan Dershowitz is facing another lawsuit over his denials that he had sex with one of Jeffrey Epstein's victims