Defamation accusations fly in feud between Alan Dershowitz and David Boies
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Defamation claims are multiplying following a lawsuit by a woman who claims she was a victim of financier Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring, and Epstein’s lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, had sex with her when she was a minor.
The initial defamation claim was made by Dershowitz’s accuser, Virginia Roberts Guiffre, in an April lawsuit against Dershowitz. Giuffre had claimed in her suit that the former Harvard law professor defamed her when he called her a liar.
David Boies of Boies Schiller Flexner had represented Giuffre until he was kicked off the case last month as a potential witness following Dershowitz’s claim that he had a recording of Boies casting doubt on Giuffre’s claims.
Now Boies has sued Dershowitz for defamation, and Dershowitz has filed a defamation counterclaim against Giuffee, report the New York Law Journal and Courthouse News Service.
Boies’ Nov. 7 suit says Dershowitz’s media statements suggested that Boies was part of an extortion scheme in which women were induced to make false allegations against Dershowitz.
Boies’ suit described Dershowitz as a longtime friend and lawyer for Epstein, a convicted pedophile, who has “been personally accused under oath by two women of sexually abusing them when they were young.”
“In an effort to distract attention from his own misconduct,” Boies’ suit says, Dershowitz “has engaged in a campaign to attack and vilify each of the lawyers who have represented his victims.”
The same day that Boies filed his suit, Dershowitz filed counterclaims against Giuffre for defamation and infliction of emotional distress. Dershowitz said Giuffre’s allegations were part of a broader scheme with her lawyers to make a public example out of him with false accusations, and to extort settlements from other wealthier individuals associated with Epstein.
“Dershowitz never met Giuffre and never had sex with her,” he says in his counterclaims. Before meeting her lawyers at Boies Schiller Flexner, Giuffre had never included Dershowitz in her list of people to whom she was allegedly trafficked, Dershowitz said.
Epstein died by suicide in federal custody in August after he was charged with sex trafficking by federal prosecutors. In 2008, he pleaded guilty to two prostitution charges in state court.
