Alan Dershowitz: Prince Andrew should not have settled lawsuit

“A great weight has been lifted off my shoulders,” Alan Dershowitz told the JC this week.

The distinguished retired Harvard law professor was speaking in his first interview since Virginia Giuffre dropped her lawsuit against him, following an eight-year legal battle.

Last month, Giuffre admitted that she “may have made a mistake” when she accused Dershowitz of having had sex with her.

Dershowitz said that he believed that Giuffre had dropped her case at the urging of her lawyers, after he had painstakingly gathered travel and other records.

These, he said, irrefutably proved he could not possibly have been in the exotic places where she claimed to have had sex with him, including the convicted sex offender Jeffrey
Epstein’s Caribbean island and New Mexican ranch.

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Virginia Giuffre

Dershowitz told the JC that he believed that she knew her credibility would be “ripped to shreds” if she proceeded to trial.

“She claimed to have had sex with me on seven specific occasions when I have never met her in my life and I have the documents to prove it,” he said during the interview in Tel Aviv.

When Giuffre first made her accusations, in 2014, Dershowitz was 76 and had retired from Harvard a year earlier. Presidents Clinton and Obama were among those who had written him letters of praise in 2013 wishing him a happy retirement.

“Instead, in the years that followed, my reputation was trashed, my family suffered, my retirement plans were ruined, and my health was affected,” Dershowitz said.

Although his lawsuit was abandoned, that was not true of the case against Prince Andrew.
Earlier this year, the Duke of York, while continuing vigorously to deny Giuffre’s claims, reportedly paid her more than $12 million to drop her civil action against him.

Much, if not all, of that payment was believed to have been provided by his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II. But Dershowitz said he believed the Duke was ill advised to settle.

“Prince Andrew’s lawyers should have looked much more carefully at Giuffre’s credibility and probed very deeply into it,” Dershowitz told the JC.

“It was critical to look carefully at everything she has said regarding the Epstein case, and that would include the accusations against Andrew. Paying her money in this situation will be seen by many as an admission of guilt.

“Even on legal grounds alone, Andrew should not have agreed to settle. The law was on Andrew’s side, the case could have been dismissed. She claimed she was living in Colorado when she has been living in Australia for the last 20 years.”

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Donald Trump with Alan Dershowitz (Alamy)

To bring a lawsuit in a US federal court against a non-American or non-resident, as Giuffre did against Andrew, the plaintiff has to be living in America at the time of launching the case, explains Dershowitz.

“Andrew was not well advised,” he said. “Or if he was, he rejected the advice.

“Quite possibly, he was pressured by his late mother into making a settlement in the hope the whole thing would go away and he could return to royal duties.”

As well as Prince Andrew and Dershowitz, Giuffre had accused former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, former Northern Ireland peace envoy and Democrat senator George Mitchell, former US Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, and other high-profile figures of having had sex with her, after the late disgraced financier Epstein allegedly paid her to do so.

Dershowitz is now 84, as mentally sharp as ever and still very physically fit. He has been happily married for 40 years and has no reputation as a flirt. Instead, he is seen as a serious intellectual and a committed lawyer.

And in a 50-year career at Harvard, where approximately 10,000 students were taught by him, and where he had many female research assistants, secretaries, law clerks and colleagues, not a single complaint has ever been lodged against him for personal misconduct, he said.

“People have criticised me politically, in particular when I defended Israel, but never for my personal behaviour,” he pointed out.

Nonetheless, some did believe the accusations, especially after Netflix screened a much-hyped four-part documentary on Epstein, devoting a segment to the accusations against Dershowitz.

Politics may have played a role, too. In the past, Dershowitz was admired by many for defending some very unsympathetic clients, on the grounds that everyone deserves a fair trial.

Among them were Claus von Bülow, Leona Helmsley, OJ Simpson, Michael Milken, Mike Tyson, Patty Hearst, Julian Assange and Epstein himself, for whom Dershowitz negotiated a plea deal when his client was first charged in 2005. After that, Dershowitz said he wanted nothing to do with Epstein, whom he had first met in the mid-1990s when the financier was organising seminars on evolutional biology at Harvard.

Dershowitz has also represented pro bono respected human rights activists like Natan Sharansky and Vaclav Havel, and has been a lifelong defender of civil liberties.

But in recent years, as a new “cancel culture” atmosphere has arisen, there are people who aim to “cancel” a lawyer for representing someone they don’t like, he said.

So when Dershowitz was hired by President Donald Trump to represent him at his impeachment hearings, many longtime close friends of Dershowitz completely shut him out of their lives.

Various prominent Jewish venues in New York have disinvited him from giving talks on antisemitism or Israel, subjects on which he is an expert.

Dershowitz is a liberal democrat, and not a supporter of Trump.

In November 2016, at an election night soirée in his New York apartment, he and almost everyone present was rooting for Hillary Clinton to win.

He has not changed his view since, though he acknowledged that some of Trump’s initiatives, notably relating to foreign policy, have been successful.

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Alan Dershowitz: 'Prince Andrew should not have paid Virginia off'

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