Dershowitz Still Avising Sex ‘Cult’ Leader – And Once Got A Massage At His Mansion
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Alan Dershowitz still provides legal advice to Jeffrey Epstein, who has been accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls, Axios reported.
“He has called me a couple of times about legal issues, because I’m still technically his lawyer,” Dershowitz told Axios on Saturday. “But I haven’t had any social, or any other kind of contact. … You never stop being a person’s lawyer.”
Dershowitz, an emeritus professor at Harvard Law School and frequent cable news talking head, helped Epstein get a sweetheart deal after police began investigating the multimillionaire financier, the Miami Herald reported in a bombshell series. Epstein created what the Herald described as a “large, cult-like network of underage girls.”
Yet, he escaped a lifetime of prison. A friend of Bill Clinton and President Trump, and represented by top lawyers like Dershowitz and Kenneth Starr, Epstein reached a plea deal with Alexander Acosta, then U.S. attorney in Miami and now Trump’s secretary of labor: 13 months in the county jail on two prostitution charges.
Dershowitz had been friendly with Epstein prior, according to Axios. He told the news site that he got a “therapeutic massage” — from an of-age “old Russian” woman — at Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion.
“What happened was I, um, he lent us, this was well before any of this thing came out, he lent us his house once,” he said. “And I was there, my grandchildren were there, my daughter was there, and we all got massages.”
He continued: “Believe me, if I had known that anything improper had ever taken place in that house, I never would have allowed my children, my grandchildren, my wife, my daughter-in-law, my son, to have spent time there. I can tell you categorically there were no inappropriate pictures, no inappropriate anythings. It was like any other house.”
Virginia Roberts, one of Epstein’s accusers, accused Dershowitz of having sex with her when she was underage, Axios reported. Dershowitz denied this, telling the Miami Herald “the story was 100 percent flatly categorically made-up” so “she could get money.”
Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher
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