Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz filed a counter-defamation suit on Thursday against Virginia Giuffre, a woman who maintains that she was sexually abused for years by the late financier Jeffrey Epstein and forced into sex with Dershowitz. Giuffre had filed her own defamation suit against the professor ― who once represented Epstein ― back in April for knowingly making “false and defamatory” statements against her.
In doing so, Dershowitz characterized Giuffre’s claims as “lies” meant to cause him emotional distress and said she had been “pressured to falsely accuse” him by her former attorney, David Boies.
On Friday, Boies jumped into the fray. He has now filed a defamation suit against Dershowitz for what the professor said in his defamation suit against Giuffre.
“In an effort to distract attention from his own misconduct, [Dershowitz] has engaged in a campaign to attack and vilify each of the lawyers who have represented his victims, one of which is [Boies],” read Boies’ suit.
Boies was recently replaced as Giuffre’s representation after a judge in a separate case decided he had become too close to the case and could no longer appropriately represent his client. She is now represented by Charles J. Cooper.
Giuffre came out as one of Epstein’s most vocal accusers in the past year, after a Miami Herald report in November 2018 brought renewed attention and outrage toward Epstein. The disgraced money manager was found dead in his prison cell in August while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. It had been around a decade since he secured a shockingly lenient plea deal in Florida for similar allegations.
Giuffre says she was recruited as a teen by Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s so-called madame, to give him “massages.” Between 2000 to 2002, when she was 16 to 19 years old, Epstein would sexually assault her, she says, and occasionally “loan” her to other men, such as Britain’s Prince Andrew. She’s provided photo evidence placing her with Maxwell and Prince Andrew, both of whom deny the accusations.
Dershowitz has gone a step further, saying that he never met Giuffre.
“She made up the whole story out of whole cloth for financial reasons,” he told NPR back in July.
In a statement about his new defamation suit, Dershowitz said Boies ― known for defending accused serial rapist Harvey Weinstein among other high-profile cases ― “has put his entire career on trial.”
“He has opened up a Pandora’s box that endangers him and his law firm. I welcome the opportunity for the public to finally learn the sad truth about Boies and his firm,” Dershowitz said.