The Dershowitz Defense Center, Part 2
Newsmax rewarded Alan Dershowitz's dedication as a right-wing talking head with a documentary seeking to clear him of accusations regarding Jeffrey Epstein -- then he served as an Epstein defender.
Newsmax has long defended Alan Dershowitz after getting linked to a scandal involving sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, for whom he worked as a lawyer. Since then, he has been working hard as a right-wing talking head. Some examples from recent months:
Dershowitz to Newsmax: Protesters ‘Should Be Subject to Rule of Law’
Dershowitz to Newsmax: Hamas and Supporters ‘Like Khalil’ Don’t Want Peace
Dershowitz to Newsmax: Iran Must ‘Capitulate’ to Avoid Conflict
Dershowitz to Newsmax: High Court Backs Trump on Deportations
Dershowitz to Newsmax: Green Card Holders Not in US Unconditionally
Dershowitz to Newsmax: Central Park Five Will Regret Defamation Suit
Dershowitz to Newsmax: ‘Blood on Universities’ Hands’ in D.C. Murders
Dershowitz to Newsmax: Abrego Garcia Could Have Been ‘Free Man’
Dershowitz to Newsmax: US Has to Worry About More Political Assassinations
Newsmax has rewarded Dershowitz’s sticking to approved narrative by giving him a documentary about his association with Jeffrey Epstein and accusations he was a client. From a May 16 preview article:
Newsmax’s latest documentary, “Guilt by Accusation,” focuses on famed criminal defense attorney Alan Dershowitz and his response to accusations made by one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims. It premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. ET.
The episode includes a careful examination of the allegations made against Dershowitz by the late Virginia Giuffre, who was sexually trafficked by Epstein.
Giuffre had previously accused Dershowitz as one of many men she was trafficked to but later recanted the claim against the prominent attorney, saying she may have erred in accusing him. At one time, Dershowitz represented Epstein.
Dershowitz, from the beginning, denied the allegations and mounted a relentless defense to clear his name during and since the height of the #MeToo movement.
In a Newsmax appearance, Thomas and executive producer Mandy Del Rio Smith touted the documentary, claiming it was a “witch hunt” against Dershowitz, and that the idea for the documentary came from Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy himself. Dershowitz helpfully plugged the show himself in a May 18 Newsmax TV appearance:
Famed criminal defense attorney Alan Dershowitz, the subject of a documentary airing on Newsmax Sunday night about the fight to clear his name after being accused of a crime by one of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, said Sunday he has not seen the program but insisted everyone knows he was falsely accused.
“People right from the beginning said, ‘Just ignore it, let it go away,’” Dershowitz, a Harvard Law professor emeritus, told Newsmax’s “Sunday Agenda.” “I don’t want it to go away. I want everyone to understand what happened and that I was falsely accused and that if I was falsely accused, anyone could be falsely accused, and that if you’re innocent, you have to fight back.”
Then again, Dershowitz served as a lawyer for Epstein and presumably made a pretty penny doing it, so it might be a little difficult to take all of this at face value.
Epstein defender
It’s more than a bit ironic after giving Dershowitz a documentary designed to clear him of involvement in an Epstein scandal that one of Newsmax’s chief TV talking heads on the resurgent Epstein scandal is … Dershowitz. One appearance got summarized in a July 15 article:
Redacted or sealed materials in connection with late Wall Street financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein are under the courts’ jurisdiction to release, not Attorney General Pam Bondi or the Department of Justice, Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor emeritus who helped secure a plea deal in 2008 for Epstein, tells Newsmax.
Dershowitz, in an extensive interview Monday with Newsmax’s “The Record With Greta Van Susteren,” also commented that he has “seen the names” of people accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and that there “are lists of names,” but “there’s nobody currently serving in office” among them, so the controversy over a list is a “nothing-burger.”
“I don’t think you can fault Pam Bondi or the Justice Department,” when it comes to releasing any redacted or sealed materials, Dershowitz told Van Susteren. “They don’t have the authority to release this redacted material or the sealed material. I think — I can’t know this for sure — that they’ve released everything that they are able to release.”
It was not mentioned that Dershowitz made that 2008 plea deal for Epstein with then-U.S. attorney Alex Acosta, who is now on Newsmax’s board of directors. Dershowitz continued to sound like he was working for Epstein:
Epstein, he added, “had a life way before he was ever charged with any crime.”
“My wife and I went to his home for several events where he had some of the world’s greatest scientists,” said Dershowitz. “He had astronauts who had just come back from outer space. And so, of course, he attracted very, very prominent people. None of them knew he was doing anything wrong. It’s when he was first arrested for doing something wrong that everybody terminated their relationship with him.”
But, he said, “as they say in the movies, move on. There’s nothing to see here. I think almost everything that has to be released has been released.”
Dershowitz pushed more Epstein defense in a July 16 appearance:
There “never has been” a client list created by late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, one of Epstein’s former lawyers, in an interview on Newsmax on Wednesday.
“Jeffrey Epstein never made a list or created a black book, or anything, of any people who may have had improper sex with any of the young women,” Dershowitz told Newsmax’s “Wake Up America.” “What did happen is the FBI interviewed people, and the courts’ judges redacted the names of some of the people from the FBI files and from other material that was presented to the court.”
He added that he knows who the people are in the files, and said that even though their names are redacted, he could figure out who the people were from context clues.
“None of them are current public officials or elected officials or current prominent people,” said Dershowitz. “Some are dead, some are retired, but there are no smoking guns.”
[…]
He also doubled down on rejecting claims that Epstein was in Israel’s Mossad.
“The first person he would have told was me as his lawyer, because we could have used that to get him a better deal,” said Dershowitz. “Second, I’ve confirmed it with Israeli intelligence… I can tell you with 100% assurance that [conservative commentator] Tucker Carlson is dead wrong.”
In a July 18 appearance, Dershowitz insisted that “There’s nothing incriminating about Donald Trump, nothing incriminating about Bill Clinton, nothing incriminating about me, nothing incriminating about other people.” In another appearance that day, he declared that “he has seen no credible evidence that the late financier and convicted sex offender trafficked ‘women or young women’ to other people.”
Dershowitz went to bat for Epstein gal-pal Ghislaine Maxwell in a July 20 appearance:
Ghislaine Maxwell, the one-time girlfriend and associate of late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, should have her prison sentence of 20 years commuted and be called to testify to Congress about what she knows, Alan Dershowitz, a former Epstein attorney, told Newsmax on Sunday.
“I don’t know of any abusers other than Jeffrey Epstein and the people surrounding him,” Dershowitz said on “Sunday Agenda.” “I don’t know whether any of these people were trafficked to other people. The people all deny it, and there’s no evidence of that.”
But Maxwell “knows everything,” he added. “Ghislaine Maxwell is basically serving the sentence that Epstein would have gotten,” said Dershowitz. “She should never be in jail for 20 years. What should happen is that she should be freed. She should have her sentence commuted. She should then be called in front of Congress, have Congress give her total immunity, and then she can tell everything.”
The next day, Dershowitz whined about a Wall Street Journal story on Epstein:
Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax on Monday that The Wall Street Journal contacted him regarding a letter he allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein as part of a package of letters gathered to celebrate the convicted sex offender’s 50th birthday in 2003.
The Journal alleged Thursday that President Donald Trump provided a salacious letter as part of the package gathered for Epstein’s birthday by socialite Ghislaine Maxwell from various Epstein associates. Trump denied having written such a letter, yet the Journal published the story, prompting Trump to file a $10 billion defamation lawsuit.
Dershowitz told “The Record With Greta Van Susteren” that he cannot remember whether he provided something to the birthday package. He said the Journal refused to show him a copy so he could verify the signature was his.
[…]
“None of us knew at this point that Epstein was doing anything wrong. It was years before he was arrested, so I’m not embarrassed about having sent him a birthday letter, but I just don’t know if I did or not. And I’d like to know.
“My wife says she doesn’t think I did because I don’t do things like that, in terms of the cover of a magazine and using that as a way of saying something else. She just said, it doesn’t sound familiar. It doesn’t sound familiar to me either, but I’m not going to deny it. I want to see the evidence.”
Newsmax has reached out to Dow Jones & Company, Inc., the Journal’s publisher, for comment.
None of these articles disclosed that Newsmax made a pro-Dershowitz documentary. There was also no mention that, the same day on the podcast of ex-Newsmax host Eric Bolling, Dershowitz declared that Epstein “killed himself with the help of jailers. … I don’t think he could have done it by himself.”
More defense
Dershowitz’s Epstein defense awkwardly continued. Eric Mack noted in a July 22 article noting Maxwell’s appearance with Trump administration officials:
Former Epstein attorney Alan Dershowitz had predicted this sit-down in appearances on Newsmax recently, saying if you want full transparency, Maxwell “knows everything.”
“Ghislaine Maxwell is basically serving the sentence that Epstein would have gotten,” Dershowitz told “Sunday Agenda.” “She should never be in jail for 20 years. What should happen is that she should be freed. She should have her sentence commuted. She should then be called in front of Congress, have Congress give her total immunity, and then she can tell everything.”
Mack repeated Dershowitz’s defense of Maxwell in another July 22 article. It was not mentioned that one of the people who kept Epstein from getting that sentence, prosecutor Alex Acosta, is now a member of the Newsmax board of directors.
Dershowitz rhapsodized over Maxwell in a July 24 TV appearance:
Ghislaine Maxwell is the “Rosetta Stone” in the Jeffrey Epstein case and “she can provide not only verbal testimony, but probably records, travel records,” says Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz.
“Look, it would be interesting to know who was on Epstein’s island during the relevant time period when there were young women on the island,” Dershowitz told Newsmax’s “The Record With Greta Van Susteren” on Thursday.
“We know that [former President] Bill Clinton was not on the island, [President] Donald Trump was not on the island … I think Ghislaine Maxwell is the Rosetta Stone. I think she can provide information. Look, the files, the grand jury minutes, which have just been turned down by a federal district court judge in Florida, they’re going to say nothing because, you know, as I do, that prosecutors don’t put anything in grand jury testimony except minimum necessary to get an indictment, which is very little,” he added.
Dershowitz cooed further about Maxwell in a July 25 appearance:
Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law professor emeritus, told Newsmax Friday that a five-year prison sentence is “more than enough” for Ghislane Maxwell.
Appearing on “National Report,” Dershowitz called Maxwell, the “Rosetta Stone” in the case of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Maxwell was convicted for her role in helping the New York financier traffic underage girls.
Dershowitz got in another Maxwell plug in a July 27 appearance:
Former Jeffrey Epstein girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell should be able to tell the “whole truth” about the disgraced financier, but at the same time, that truth will be “very disappointing” to people hoping for salacious details about a rumored client list, Harvard Law professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax on Sunday.
“I hope that Congress will subpoena her,” he said on Newsmax’s “Sunday Report.” “I hope that she’ll have her sentence commuted, and she’ll be able to tell the whole truth [but] the whole truth is going to be very, very disappointing.”
That’s because there is “no client list,” said Dershowitz, a former attorney for Epstein.
[…]
“She shouldn’t have been in jail for 5 years for what she is alleged to have done,” Dershowitz said. “She served more time than anybody has ever served for any comparable offense.”
Dershowitz also labored to exonerate Trump — and, in the process, whitewash Epstein:
Dershowitz also on Sunday dismissed a Wall Street Journal report stating that President Donald Trump was told in May that he was in Epstein’s files.
“There’s no scoop,” he said. “Everybody knows there are photographs. Everybody knows that Donald Trump knew Jeffrey Epstein. So did [businessman] Bill Gates. So did Bill Clinton. I mean, I was on a phone call once. I was at [former ambassador to Australia] Caroline Kennedy’s house having dinner with President Clinton. He was then president. The phone rang, and he took the phone and talked for 10 or 15 minutes. And then he handed me the phone. It was Jeffrey Epstein.”
He added that he often went to science seminars that Epstein sponsored at Harvard, “where Nobel Prize winners, the president of Harvard, the provost of Harvard all came. Of course, everybody is in the files. That doesn’t mean anything.”
What is essential is proof whether anyone “had sex with underage people or whether there was any trafficking,” Dershowitz said. “Those are issues that are right now extremely speculative, and we have to get to the bottom of it.”
He went on to whine:
He also questioned why the Epstein matter has become the “biggest story in the world.”
“I’ve gotten interview calls from India, from Russia, from Saudi Arabia,” he said. “It’s as if there’s nothing else happening in the world.”
If Dershowitz doesn’t know why the Epstein story is a major one, maybe he’s not a very good or effective talking head. Meanwhile, he sounded like he was still on Epstein’s payroll in an Aug. 6 appearance:
Two of disgraced financier and child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s accusers “made up” claims about being trafficked to men for sexual purposes, attorney and legal expert Alan Dershowitz said.
Dershowitz, who previously told Newsmax he had seen no credible evidence Epstein trafficked women to other people, on Tuesday challenged people to “come up with any testimony” that proves otherwise.
This evolved into a rehash of his own, Newsmax-aided self-defense:
Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who earlier this year died by suicide, had claimed that Epstein had forced her, while she was a minor, to have sex with Dershowitz and others. She later admitted she may have been mistaken about Dershowitz.
Newsmax in May aired a documentary called “Newsfront: Guilt by Association,” which centered around the accusations about Dershowitz and how he fought back.
“People right from the beginning said, ‘Just ignore it, let it go away,’” Dershowitz said on Newsmax’s “Sunday Agenda.” “I don’t want it to go away. I want everyone to understand what happened and that I was falsely accused and that if I was falsely accused, anyone could be falsely accused, and that if you’re innocent, you have to fight back.”
Dershowitz didn’t explain why he’s fighting so hard for an obviously guilty former client who has been dead for years.
