In his countersuit, Mr Dershowitz, pictured, alleges Ms Giuffre has a history of extorting prominent men in Epstein’s circle, among them the billionaire owner of lingerie firm Victoria’s Secret Leslie Wexner
Credit: Lior Mizrahi/Hulton Archive
Boasting what the local estate agent describes as “stunning coastal opulence”, the picturesque and peaceful Ocean Reef complex is one of Perth, Australia’s most prestigious addresses.
Offering breathtaking 180-degree panoramic views of the Pacific ocean, the latest property to be sold on the sought-after estate provides luxurious accommodation over 450 square metres including six bedrooms, four bathrooms, a powder room and entertainment room.
Outside there is a below-ground solar-heated swimming pool, surrounded by a cedar-lined English-thatch gazebo with sprawling views all the way to Freemantle.
Last week, it was revealed that the £1 million property has become home to Virginia Roberts Giuffre, 37, the most prominent and outspoken survivor of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, after she posted a picture on Instagram posing in front of the sold sign with her husband Robert and their three teenage children.
The family’s relocation 4,400km from Cairns where it is thought they also own a £800,000 property comes after the couple became equal shareholders in a proprietary company named Witty River Pty Ltd in October.
The timing has become a source of intrigue to those closely following developments in the on-going Epstein saga, after Ms Giuffre (pictured below) settled for an undisclosed sum with both the billionaire financier’s estate and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell following a defamation action in 2017.
Credit: Netflix
Ms Giuffre claims Ms Maxwell “pimped” her out to a string of high-profile men including Prince Andrew and the retired Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz.
Both men vehemently deny the claims.
Yet in spite of starting a new life in Western Australia, the legal wrangling is far from over Ms Giuffre. Following her arrest in July, Ms Maxwell is facing trial charged with enticement of minors, sex trafficking, and perjury over her association with Epstein.
On Friday, The Telegraph reported Ms Maxwell and her husband Scott Borgeson, 44, a wealthy tech entrepreneur, will pledge a £22.5 million bail in an attempt to secure her freedom from a detention centre in Brooklyn before Christmas.
Ms Giuffre also has her own high-profile trial next year after launching a defamation suit against Mr Dershowitz for calling her a “certified, complete, total liar.”
She has said of the case: “I know he’s going to put up a good fight. But, at the end of it, I know we’re gonna win. We’ve got the truth on our side.”
In his countersuit, Mr Dershowitz alleges Ms Giuffre has a history of extorting prominent men in Epstein’s circle, among them the billionaire owner of lingerie firm Victoria’s Secret Leslie Wexner.
Having granted Epstein power of attorney over his vast fortune when he was a little-known money manager, the reasons for Mr Wexner’s close association with Epstein have long been unclear amid suggestions Epstein abused his position by posing as a recruiter to exploit young underwear models.
Mr Dershowitz’s lawyer Howard Cooper issued broad subpoenas to both Mr Wexner and his attorney John Zeiger earlier this year, prompting the latter to insist: “No extortion demand was ever made, no settlement was entered into, and not a penny (or other consideration) was ever paid.”
Ms Giuffre’s lawyer David Boies has since described Mr Dershowitz’s assertion that there was an extortion attempt as a “smokescreen.”
Answering questions about his links to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in the BBC interview, Prince Andrew, pictured, said the alleged incidents "never happened"
Credit: Enterprise News
The forthcoming case is certainly clouded by a number of factors. When The Telegraph spoke to Mr Dershowitz at his New York home on Wednesday, he continued to both protest his innocence and accuse Ms Giuffre of making up claims that first surfaced in a December 30, 2014, Florida court filing alleging that he was one of several prominent figures, including Prince Andrew, who had participated in sexual activities with a minor.
Insisting he has never even met Ms Giuffre, Mr Dershowitz, 82, said of his ongoing litigation, which is thought to have already cost in excess of £2 million: “The reason I can do this is I have nothing to hide. I have no secrets. They picked on the wrong, innocent person.”
Mr Dershowitz points to an independent investigation carried out in 2015 by Louis Freeh, former head of the FBI, which said that investigators had “found no evidence to support the accusations.”
He also claims he can account for his whereabouts on each of the seven occasions Ms Giuffre has accused him of having sex with her.
Pointing to Carolyn, his second wife of 34 years, he added: “From the day I met Jeffrey Epstein, in 1998 until today, I have only touched sexually one woman, my wife. I don’t hug, I don’t kiss, I don’t touch people’s hair. Over a 50-year career, practicing as a lawyer and teaching at Harvard, I have had hundreds and hundreds of female students, research assistants, secretaries and colleagues and I have never been accused of anything. Not ever. I am not that guy.”
Yet, in the post #MeToo era, Mr Dershowitz certainly appears to have been found guilty by association. When The Telegraph approached Ms Giuffre’s spokeswoman and lawyers for comment, they all declined.
Instead The Telegraph was pointed towards a “well-researched” August 2019 New Yorker profile of Mr Dershowitz headlined The Devil’s Advocate. Strap-lined with the Dershowtiz quote: “Every honest criminal lawyer will tell you that he defends the guilty and the innocent,” it details a career spent aggressively airing “hawkish” views on subjects such as feminism and Israel, and defending controversial clients including Claus von Bülow, OJ Simpson, Mike Tyson, Donald Trump and of course, Jeffrey Epstein.
Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell in 2005
Credit: Patrick McMullan
Many Epstein survivors will never forgive Mr Dershowitz for helping to secure a deal for his client following the first criminal case in 2008, in which Epstein pleaded guilty to a state charge (one of two) of procuring for prostitution a girl below the age of 18 in spite of sworn accounts from more than a dozen women.
Although Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in prison, he was instead housed in a private wing of the Palm Beach County Stockade and, according to the sheriff’s office, was allowed to leave the jail on "work release" after three months, for up to 12 hours a day, 6 days a week.
On July 6, 2019, Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges, and held at the Metropolitan Correctional Centre in New York City, where he was found dead in his cell a month later.
Yet, even the supportive New Yorker piece raises questions about the timeline Ms Giuffre originally gave, in which she suggested she first met Ms Maxwell, and consequently, Epstein, when she was 15.
The article states: "In 2000, Giuffre, then not quite seventeen, was outside Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s resort in Palm Beach, Florida, where she had recently got a job as a locker-room attendant.
Ms Maxwell, pulling out of the parking lot in a chauffeured car, spotted her and told the driver to stop. Ms Giuffre was reading a book about anatomy and massage therapy.
“This nice older lady came up to me,” she recalled. “She had an awesome English accent, and she started conversing with me about what I was reading.
She said, ‘Wow, you’re really interested in massage. That’s so interesting! Because I actually know somebody who’s looking for a travelling masseuse.’”
In a previous interview with the Mail on Sunday, Ms Giuffre claimed: “After about two years, he (Epstein) started to ask me to "entertain" his friends.”
That would have made her 19 when the alleged sex trafficking took place and therefore not under the age of consent in regards to the allegations made against both Mr Dershowitz and Prince Andrew, which she claims occurred in 2001 when she was 17.
Buckingham Palace has stated "any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors is categorically untrue", later repeating the denials.
According to Ms Giuffre’s timeline, she finally “escaped” Epstein in 2002 when she travelled to Thailand, aged 19. The Telegraph asked Ms Giuffre’s representatives to clarify the dates of her association with Ms Maxwell and Epstein but they declined.
Her lawyers have always acknowledged because Ms Giuffre had used drugs throughout the time she was with Epstein, she is hazy on dates.
Jeffrey Epstein with Professor Alan Dershowitz
Credit: Rick Friedman/Corbis Historical
Her supporters say she has never claimed to be a perfect witness.
Mr Dershowitz appears an equally imperfect alleged victim of a false accusation. Branded a “misogynist” by supporters of the #MeToo movement for branding Ms Giuffre a “prostitute”, over the years he has gained a reputation for airing provocative opinions about sex and the law, such as lowering the age of consent to 15 and his penchant for representing seemingly violent men.
Yet, Mr Dershowitz points to the hypocrisy of his opponent having previously been represented by Mr Boies, who defended Harvey Weinstein after he was accused of sexually harassing, assaulting, or raping dozens of women in October 2017.
Mr Boies’ law firm Boies Schiller Flexner reportedly directed private intelligence company Black Cube to spy on alleged victims and reporters who were investigating Weinstein’s actions.
Black Cube is a private intelligence company founded in 2010 by former Israeli intelligence officers Dan Zorella and Avi Yanus.
The historic acrimony between Mr Boies and Mr Dershowitz is another intriguing aspect of the case.
Mr Dershowitz says he has tape recordings of Mr Boies in which Mr Boies suggests he will advise Ms Giuffre that her conclusion about Mr Dershowitz abusing her is “simply wrong”.
Mr Boies told the New Yorker the conversation was a “hypothetical” way of exploring how he might persuade an aggrieved client to accept a settlement, if Mr Dershowitz could offer definitive proof. (Mr Boies is not representing Giuffre in the forthcoming defamation trial because he and Mr Dershowitz have previously settled a defamation claim out of court).
Mr Boies did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr Dershowitz cites a TV appearance by another of Ms Giuffre’s former lawyers, Brad Edwards, as further evidence of his innocence.
Speaking to the US network CBS following Epstein’s reincarceration in July 2019, Mr Edwards said: “I have personally been investigating this for 11 years and don’t know of any high-profile person that would be implicated.”
Mr Edwards did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr Dershowitz also has Ms Giuffre’s close friend Rebecca Boylan on tape claiming Ms Giuffre was pursuing him under pressure from lawyers, and that “I’ve never heard her mention you as [sic] when we were kids.”
And, he claims to have evidence which undermines Ms Giuffre’s claims about meeting both former President Bill Clinton and his deputy Al Gore on Epstein’s Caribbean island, Little St James.
Virginia Roberts photographed with Prince Andrew and Ghislaine Maxwell in early 2001
Also submitted in evidence in the forthcoming defamation trial is a transcript of a taped conversation between Sharon Churcher the journalist who originally interviewed Ms Giuffre in 2011, and Tony Lyons, who published Mr Dershowitz’s recent book Guilt By Association: The Challenge of Proving Innocence in the age of #MeToo.
In the recording, made in October 2019, Ms Churcher alleges: “These lawyers, remember, they do everything on contingency. And they all have these fantastic offices. And there’s all these ads now. There’s one in which you can say, you just remembered you were abused? Call us.”
Mr Dershowitz will also be relying on an email exchange from May 2011, in which Ms Giuffre asks Churcher to clarify the names of the men she claimed “JE had sent me to” during the interview to help her with a book pitch.
The transcript of the email suggests Ms Churcher responds six days later saying: “Don’t forget Alan Dershowitz. JE’s buddy and lawyer … We all suspect Alan is a peado … ”.
Mr Dershowitz claims this was evidence he was “set up”. He is so determined to expose Ms Giuffre’s “lies” that he is preparing a letter inviting the US Department of Justice to investigate them both for perjury.
He said: “The FBI should come to the trial, because they will hear perjury committed in the federal courthouse. Either I will be committing perjury because I will swear under oath that I never met this woman, or she will be committing perjury because she will be swearing her oath that she had sex with me on multiple occasions. Only one of us can be telling the truth.”
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