“Let me see your laptop for a second, I need to look something up,” I said, as I grabbed her computer.
“I knew it. Here it is. Check out this article in the Daily Mail from earlier that same year. Just a few months before they jointly stated that Epstein had full sexual intercourse with victims, his attorney, Alan Dershowitz, was reported to have told the Daily Mail that ‘Epstein had passed a lie detector test showing he was innocent of allegations’ and that ‘[t]he financier had paid for massages, but had not engaged in sex or erotic massages with any minors.’ It goes on to say that Dershowitz said that the girl who accused Epstein of forcible sex ‘had a long record of lying, theft, and blaming others for her crimes.’ ” On its face, the letter appeared irreconcilable with those statements made that same year.
“How can he say that? This is unbelievable,” Brittany quickly replied.
I came back to the central issue. “Let’s not forget, the NPA was signed on September 24, 2007, before any of the victims were ever told that any type of agreement was even being negotiated. We need to figure out why. We know that the prosecutor emailed Epstein’s lawyer that same day insinuating that they needed to discuss what she could tell the victims, but how long did this go on?”
She responded a few seconds later, reading from an October 10, 2007, email from Epstein’s lawyer Jay Lefkowitz to then U.S. attorney Alex Acosta. “ ‘Neither federal agents nor anyone from your office should contact the identified individuals to inform them of the resolution of the case.… Not only would that violate the confidentiality of the agreement, but Mr. Epstein also will have no control over what is communicated to the identified individuals at this most critical stage.’ ”
This helped answer a crucial question. I said: “Well the one thing that we now know for sure is that the government complied with Epstein’s demands not to notify the victims because on May 30, 2008—eight months after the NPA was signed—the government sent out a series of letters to victims saying, ‘[t]his case is currently under investigation. This can be a lengthy process and we request your continued patience while we conduct a thorough investigation.’ That is the letter that brought Courtney to my office in the first place. We win this case on summary judgment,” I told her confidently.
The review of these communications came directly on the heels of our meeting with Virginia. We now had the evidence we’d been looking for to strengthen our CVRA case—emails which revealed that the victims’ rights had indeed been violated.
THIRTY DERSHOWITZ
IN ADDITION TO EPSTEIN AND Maxwell, two other individuals surfaced in Virginia’s account who seemed relevant to the CVRA case she was looking to join. Prince Andrew was one of them. That aspect of Virginia’s story discussed how she was internationally trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell. Alan Dershowitz was the other. He was important because he was not only one of Epstein’s attorneys when the unprecedented NPA was secretly crafted immunizing Epstein and all co-conspirators, but according to witnesses, he was also a friend and houseguest during time periods when Epstein was sexually abusing minors.
By late 2014, we had accumulated testimony and evidence of a personal relationship between Dershowitz and Epstein, but until talking with Virginia, the information we knew about Dershowitz didn’t seem important to the CVRA case. Of course it was offensive that he would discredit Epstein’s child victims to make sure Epstein stayed out of trouble. The fact that he so respected Epstein, a serial molester and abuser, was concerning. And it was beyond frustrating that he would not sit for a deposition so we could question what he saw during his relationship with Epstein. But, as close as it seemed he and Epstein were, nobody had ever specifically identified him to us as someone involved in Epstein’s other lifestyle. Until Virginia.
In assessing how much detail the court needed to know about Virginia’s involvement with Epstein in order to make a ruling on her ability to join the CVRA case as Jane Doe 3, we were extremely conflicted. Our focus was on the criminal acts of Jeffrey Epstein. We were not looking to unnecessarily expand the scope of the investigation or make the case messier than it already was. We felt, however, that we did need to explain to the court what made Virginia’s account different from the current petitioners in the case, which was her frequent travel on Epstein’s jet while she was undeniably underage, highlighted by her introduction to British royalty while a child, and her knowledge of one of Epstein’s friends who also happened to be one of Epstein’s lawyers at the time the NPA was devised. Virginia didn’t just come in and out of Epstein’s world through the side door of his Palm Beach mansion for an hour at a time like most of the other victims whose stories Judge Marra was familiar with. She traveled with Epstein and Maxwell for two years. She was intimately familiar with the inner workings of the operation and the expansive jurisdiction of the criminal organization. And through her accounts she offered a fuller explanation for why the sneaky deal was made to save Epstein.
There was another category of victim to be added to the CVRA case whose rights were not yet represented. These were the dozen or so individuals whom we identified as victims of Epstein’s underage sex abuse but who, because the government elected to stop investigating and instead enter into this broad immunity agreement, were never formally identified by the government as victims. Before deciding to add Jane Doe 4 to represent the interests of that subcategory, we informed the U.S. Attorney’s Office about her and several others who were similarly situated and who wanted to prosecute Epstein for the crimes he had committed. Because the government, having stopped its investigation, did not know their identities at the time the non-prosecution agreement was signed—or even eight months later when Epstein made his plea in state court—there could not possibly be any restriction against filing a new indictment against Epstein for those newly discovered crimes committed against these newly discovered victims. Right? Despite our urging, the government refused to bring charges on behalf of these victims. While they would not commit to the position that Epstein’s NPA was the reason they refused to bring those charges, they offered no other explanation, leaving us to believe they were using the NPA as cover to avoid prosecuting him.
We then felt strongly that it was important to join Jane Doe 4 at the time we moved to join Virginia Roberts, in the CVRA case. We decided to file the “Jane Doe #3 and Jane Doe #4’s Motion Pursuant to Rule 21 for Joinder in Action” the day before New Year’s Eve. We had hoped that the filing would go unnoticed, and it almost did, with the exception of one studious reporter.
On December 31, 2014, Josh Gerstein published an article in Politico in which he detailed the filing, focusing primarily on the allegations of sexual misconduct that Virginia had made regarding Alan Dershowitz, Prince Andrew, and Ghislaine Maxwell. Dershowitz was quoted in the article as saying that Virginia’s allegations were “totally made up and totally fabricated from beginning to end.”
Dershowitz’s loud denial was not unexpected. We even expected for him to go on the attack against Virginia. What we did not expect was where he took his attack next. The first few days of 2015 were something straight out of a movie, one in which Dershowitz had decided to cast me as the villain.
THIRTY-ONE RUNNING INTERFERENCE
IN JANUARY 2015, MY FAMILY TV set was turned on in my living room when my youngest son came running into my home office to tell me that my picture was on the screen and they were talking about me. I thought, Cool, hopefully the public is finally taking notice of the importance of the CVRA case. I could not have been more wrong. Alan Dershowitz was on CNN going berserk. Had I read his 2013 book Taking the Stand: My Life in the Law, this would not have been surprising.
He didn’t just attack Virginia or her allegations, he turned his guns on Paul and me. Dershowitz went on one major national television network after another, fuming about Paul and me for allowing Virginia’s allegations to be filed in a court pleading. He went on CNN, NBC, Fox, and MSNBC, repeatedly claiming that we should be kicked out of the legal profession—or worse�
��for believing our client. CNN was giving more airtime to Dershowitz than the network (or, for that matter, any other network) had ever given to the victims, so that he could impress that he had done nothing wrong, that he was merely Jeffrey Epstein’s lawyer, and that Paul and I were the bad guys for believing Virginia.
On January 5, Dershowitz told CNN, “If they had just done an hour of research and work, they would have seen that she is lying through her teeth, that’s why I’m going after them, their bar cards.” He made so many threats about us that it was impossible to keep track. Dershowitz was trying to bully us. I spent the night fielding calls from friends, family, and other lawyers. I wanted to respond and go toe to toe on the facts, but my obligation was to my clients, including Virginia, and getting lured into a media battle would not be helpful to them. Still, we couldn’t just ignore him.
In addition to his rants about Paul and me, he claimed that if Virginia believed the allegations she was leveling against him then she should be suing him for damages, which he claimed to want because it would give him a vehicle through which he could prove his innocence in court. But there was a major escape hatch in his “earnest” plea to be sued: the statute of limitations, which prevents such claims from being brought after a certain time period has passed.
By January 5, 2015, when Dershowitz was well into his public attack, David Boies, who had vetted Virginia’s allegations, came to my office to consider how best to take Dershowitz up on his request to be sued by Virginia and his public offer to waive the statute of limitations. We decided I would send a simple, straightforward letter to Dershowitz asking him to make good on his offer to waive the statute by signing a one-paragraph agreement to that effect. Dershowitz never signed it, but that didn’t stop him from continuing to publicly trash Paul and me.
The next day, I called Jack Scarola and asked him how quickly Paul and I could put together a defamation lawsuit against Dershowitz, since he would not stop attacking us. We sued Dershowitz that day—January 6, 2015. Jack was excited to represent us because he knew Dershowitz would now be unable to avoid having his deposition taken. But the filing of our lawsuit did not slow Alan down.
During his interviews, Dershowitz tried hard to control the narrative, but the public became less concerned about him and more focused on his client Mr. Epstein and the raw deal the victims received during the process. In addition to drawing negative attention to his client, Dershowitz also began encountering interviewers who started familiarizing themselves with the facts and asking him tougher questions about different aspects of his relationship with Epstein, including the topic of massage. On January 21, 2015, Dershowitz told the New York Daily News that he “never got a massage from anybody. It’s made up out of whole cloth.” Yet one day later, on January 22, 2015, he told Bob Norman of Channel 10 that he had a massage in Epstein’s house but “kept my underwear on during the massage. I don’t like massages particularly.”
Because of Dershowitz, the entire Epstein story was now being thrust into the spotlight. People finally began noticing, and caring, about our CVRA case and the injustice of what the government had done in forgiving Epstein’s unforgivable crimes against vulnerable children. If causing a distraction was the goal, it ultimately backfired. Dershowitz finally turned what had been a local story into national and even international news. After he made his first TV rounds, the reports started to circulate globally—Epstein was a politically connected billionaire who was investigated for receiving erotic massages from many underage females; he was now a registered sex offender; Dershowitz was one of his lawyers and longtime personal friends; as his lawyer, Dershowitz played a role in negotiating a non-prosecution agreement that immunized from federal sex offenses not only Epstein but also Epstein’s named and unnamed co-conspirators; and now Virginia Roberts, one of Epstein’s victims, was describing Epstein’s traveling sex cult, which had operated for more than a decade throughout the country and even overseas and included some of Epstein’s friends.
As that litigation continued, it began to consume a lot of my time. Dershowitz had further complicated things by filing a defamation counterclaim against us. In response, we filed a motion to dismiss his counterclaim. He didn’t give up and instead filed an amended counterclaim, which we again moved to dismiss. And, while Jack Scarola was representing me, he didn’t know the details the way I did, so most of the case-building for the lawsuit had to be done by Paul or me.
While the isolated facts leading to this defamation lawsuit were relatively simple, the lawsuit itself was more complicated. Basically, Virginia’s allegations about being trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell included allegations regarding other people. Dershowitz claimed that Virginia was lying about everything and, more important, that we should have known Virginia was lying about everything when we allowed her allegations to be placed in the public record. Our lawsuit against Dershowitz was, then, not really about whether Virginia or Alan was telling the truth, but instead about what we knew or should have known about Virginia’s credibility at the time the allegations were made. Still, there was no way to isolate that issue without delving into the underlying allegations and defenses.
Of course, in these types of “he said, she said” situations, it is rarely easy to know for sure exactly what happened between two people decades earlier. In most cases, though, we can ask the other witnesses who were allegedly there. In this case, the obvious witnesses who would know what had occurred included Jeffrey Epstein and his other named co-conspirators from the NPA. However, during their depositions, each of these witnesses hid behind the Fifth Amendment rather than answer questions.
Epstein was Dershowitz’s friend and client, so Epstein’s refusal to answer questions about Dershowitz on the basis that it would somehow incriminate Epstein certainly did not weigh favorably for Dershowitz. However, we could not place too much emphasis on that fact, since there were few questions in any proceeding for which Epstein didn’t invoke the Fifth Amendment. With the only potential eyewitnesses all under Epstein’s control, refusing to answer questions, the case became something of a credibility contest between Dershowitz and Virginia. We had vetted Virginia, both personally and through other attorneys and means.
The most seemingly outrageous claim she ever made was that she was taken by Epstein and Maxwell to London, where she was lent out to Prince Andrew, Duke of York, yet there she was with a photo of her with the Prince and Ghislaine, and Epstein’s flight logs corroborated the trip. We also gathered as much information as we possibly could about Dershowitz, given his lack of cooperation with us. Despite our efforts, he had avoided giving us a deposition before now, but certainly his relationship with Epstein appeared closer than some of his statements suggested. We believed the facts and law were on our side.
Again, the gist of Dershowitz’s public assault on us was that we had failed to check the truth of our client’s claims, or even worse, knew her claims were false, before allowing her joinder motion in the CVRA case. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. While these types of cases are rarely susceptible to absolute proof, we had certainly investigated Virginia’s story and had good reason to allow her to assert her voice in court.
Dershowitz did not have the facts or the law on his side, but he had prepared a strategy for this type of situation that he had expressed many years before in his 2013 book. He wrote, “There’s an old saying: ‘If you have the law on your side, bang on the law. If you have the facts on your side, bang on the facts. If you have neither, bang on the table.’ I have never believed that, but I do believe in a variation on that theme: If you don’t have the law or legal facts on your side, argue your case in the court of public opinion.”
At least we knew he believed in his own advice.
THIRTY-TWO TITONE
SINCE THE BEGINNING, CALLS HAVE always poured in about this case. Most are from people who want to be helpful but don’t have any real evidence or new information. But every once in a while, a more important, or at least interesting, call w
ould come in. On February 25, 2015, I received one of those more interesting calls. It was from a lawyer who said that he represented someone I would be interested in speaking with, and wanted to make a personal appointment to come to my office. He wouldn’t tell me who he represented over the phone. He insisted on meeting in person. And specifically on meeting at my office. He set the time for eight a.m. sharp.
Joe Titone was on time, dressed in a suit, and wearing a Kangol-style cap. He told me that he had been a politician and that his daughter was married to Adam Sandler. (That turns out to be true, and I can’t wait to hear Sandler’s song about how his name ended up in this book, of all places.) When Titone sat down, I still had no idea who he represented or why he was there.
Before he would tell me who he represented, he wanted to know, based on the information I had collected, whether I believed Epstein would ever be prosecuted. I told him I had no idea. Serious red flags went up. “Before we go any further,” I said, “who do you represent?” He didn’t answer. The conversation was going nowhere. Seeing that the meeting was going to end if he didn’t identify his client, and seemingly exasperated, he launched into a tale that was one of those mixtures of fact and fiction that keeps you intrigued enough to listen.
Relentless Pursuit Page 24
