Epstein's former lawyer: Information has been suppressed, Trump should release the files

0:02The Telegraph.

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1:23He has worked for some of the most controversial people to enter the dock. Mike Tyson, Harvey Weinstein, Julian Assange. He famously was part of the team that got O.J. Simpson acquitted of murder in 1995, dubbed the trial of the century. Alan Dershowitz is a leading American lawyer and emeritus professor at Harvard Law School, who has made his name working on the defense team in some of America's most high-profile cases and as a staunch defender of civil liberties. He's also represented Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted paedophile who has recently been causing trouble for Donald Trump, even from beyond the grave.

2:01Today, Alan Dershowitz speaks to me about Epstein and his relationship with Donald Trump and Bill Clinton. The Telegraph has also spoken to one of Epstein's former butlers, and we put his fresh allegations directly to Mr Dershowitz. Welcome to The Daily Tea, with me, Tim Stanley.

2:31Mr. Dershowitz, as I mentioned in my introduction, you've worked on the defense team for some pretty controversial characters. Do you ever regret having defended an individual? No, I defended Nelson Mandela. I defended Ted Kennedy. I defended President Trump. I've defended some of the finest people in the world and some of the worst people in the world, like Sir Thomas More in the play A Man for All Seasons. I would defend the devil in order to keep the law from being abolished. That's the job I do. John Adams defended the Boston Massacre defendants. And I'm proud to defend the most controversial, the most unpopular people, and will continue to do so in the name of the Constitution.

3:16Hear, hear. Thank you. So moving on to one of those very controversial people, Jeffrey Epstein. Can I ask how you were first introduced to Mr. Epstein? I was introduced by the Lady Rothschild, Lynn Forrester, who got married to Evelyn Rothschild. She begged me to meet him. She said he was the most wonderful person in the world. She basically introduced Jeffrey Epstein to everybody, to Bill Clinton, to many other people. She, Lynn Rothschild, Lady Rothschild, is at the center of this whole thing. She knew Jeffrey Epstein all during his lifetime. They then had a falling out later on, as everybody seems to have had a falling out with Jeffrey Epstein.

4:01But she was the one who introduced me. And can I ask you, because this whole thing can just seem very strange to ordinary mortals. What was the secret to Jeffrey Epstein? How did he get to know so many rich and powerful people? Well, he was a charming man who loved to bring people together. I taught at Harvard at that time for 35 years, and he introduced me during his lunch seminars to people on the Harvard faculty I had never met. For example, Church, Professor Church, who decoded the genome. He sat him next to me at an event. He was a great introducer of people. He collected people. He was charming.

4:43He was funny. None of us, as far as I know, knew about his penchant for underage females. He never was with underage females in our presence. The youngest person I ever saw him with was about a 27-year-old graduate student at the Harvard Business School. So he kept his private life very, very secret from everybody. Did you all understand how he made his money? Because that, too, is very mysterious. Well, he told me, I don't know if it's true, that he got 1 % of all the money he invested for Leslie Wexner. Leslie Wexner is worth$9 billion. Do the arithmetic. 1 % of$9 billion will buy you islands.

5:24He also told me, don't know if it's true, that he was sold the house in New York, which is the largest single residence of New York, for$1, and that he also got the airplane from Leslie Wexner for a very, very small amount of money. So the relationship between Leslie Wexner and Jeffrey Epstein is a real mystery, and why Wexner would give him his power of attorney, which is like giving him his whole life. That's the mystery. The mystery is not how he made the money. The mystery is how he got to get the trust of Leslie Wexner to the degree that Wexner would give him all that money. And Wexner was, am I right, made his fortune out of ladies' underwear?

6:09No, no, no. No, is he not Victoria's Secret? So I got the wrong person. Sorry. No, no, no. It is Victoria's Secret. But that came later. He made his money on women's sweaters and women's shirts and clothing. Only later in life did he buy Victoria's Secret. I see. My apologies. Now, to cut a very long story short, in 2008, Epstein went to jail for prostitution and prostitution with a minor under 18, and he served just 13 months. Civil cases followed that. In 2019, he was charged with sex trafficking minors and conspiracy, and in August, he was found dead in his cell. In 2021, his former associate Ghislaine Maxwell was jailed for 20 years for incitement and trafficking.

6:48Just to place you within that narrative, at which point were you legally involved with Epstein in terms of defending him? I was his lawyer in the 2008 deal that we made, and I was able to prove to the government that they had no evidence of any interstate transportation, which would deny the federal government jurisdiction. So we made a deal whereby he would plead to a state charge. He clearly committed a state crime by having sex for money with one underage female who was 17 and a half and another who was 18 or 19. So I was part of the group, along with some other very, very eminent lawyers who made the deal for Jeffrey Epstein.

7:29And let me interject one point here. If Epstein had ever worked for U.S. intelligence or for Israeli intelligence or for British intelligence or any intelligence service, he would have told his lawyer that because we asked him over and over again. Is there anything you can tell us about help you gave the government that would help us make a better deal? And Epstein categorically denied that he had done anything for any government. Now, as part of the deal that we made, he was obliged to cooperate with law enforcement in the future and give them information that they sought. And he did cooperate.

8:06And that's why the deal was kept. Thank you for clarifying that. Because again, for those who are not familiar with the case, partly because of the mysterious nature of Epstein and because his money seems so opaque to people, questions have been raised about whether or not he was involved in some way with security services and is that how he was able to. The other reason that that was raised is because obviously Ghislaine Maxwell's father, Robert Maxwell, was credibly accused of having done work for intelligence. And so that connection was made. But I'm not aware of any real connection between Jeffrey Epstein and Robert Maxwell.

8:43So that was a little bit of a stretch. Well, at this point, I will ask you, we have interviewed Jeffrey Epstein's butler, or one of his butlers, called Valdson Vieira Kotrin, who has shared with us some photographs, some private photographs of Epstein, one of which shows Epstein wearing an IDF t-shirt. Does that change any of this for you? Or would you imagine this is just pure coincidence? Is there anything to credibly link him anyway to Israel? I was with Jeffrey Epstein. I was literally with him walking in the shook when he bought that t-shirt. Oh, really? Right. Yes. What happened is I was in Israel writing a book and he called me, He was in Paris and he said, I've never been to Israel.

9:31I want to come for the day. Would you arrange a lunch with some of Israel's most prominent people, intellectuals? And so I arranged a lunch at the Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem with a justice to the Supreme Court, a couple of professors. And then we took a walk in the Shook and he bought an IDF T-shirt and he wore it. He wore it very proudly. He was supportive of Israel, obviously. And then he left that night. But I know of no connections whatsoever between Israel, the IDF, intelligence, and Jeffrey Epstein. To bring things up to date, before the 2024 election, the president said that he would release the so-called Epstein files, which is something that his supporters have demanded a very long time.

10:16But along with his attorney general, Pam Bondi, the president is now refusing to do that. Could you explain for our audience what are these documents and what are their significance? There are several documents. There are documents that have been sealed by three or four judges in New York. Those documents contain accusations made by women against prominent people, but they also contain material that show that a lot of these accusers were lying. The difficult thing is judges don't want to release the accusations unless they also release the rebuttals to the accusations, and the rebuttals involve naming the alleged victims, which judges don't want to do.

10:56So it's a very complicated issue. So that's one tranche of materials that the judges have sealed. Other is that grand jury material, which is sealed as a matter of law. And the third is a material that the Justice Department may have. Look, there is no client list. There is no list that was created by Jeffrey Epstein of clients. If there were, I'd be the first person who wanted it out there because I'm not I wouldn't be on the list. I was not one of his clients. He was my client. I was his lawyer. And so there is information that's been sealed. I know of at least one person who was accused and his name has been suppressed because his lawyer went to court and got a ruling that his name shouldn't be released.

11:41And if his name is released, so should information about the lack of credibility of the accuser. That's what's the complicating factor. The alleged victims' names have to be released if there's a question about their credibility. A lot of people assume that Trump isn't releasing all of this stuff, not for the legal complexities that you've described, but because he himself might be named. Do you think that's a credible issue? Well, I've seen a lot of the sealed material, and I can tell you Donald Trump's name is not in any incriminating fashion included. We all know that they knew each other. He was quoted in Vanity Fair.

12:19There are photographs of them together. but I know of no credible information accusing him of doing anything improper. We know that Trump and Epstein were familiar with each other in Florida. Trump says that he had an argument with Epstein and ceased contact with him in 2004. Do you think that's correct? Well, I think they stopped seeing each other. I don't know the reason. I've heard now three or four different reasons. A real estate deal, he approached one of the member's daughters, he poached some employees. I don't know the reason, but I can attest to the fact that when I knew Jeffrey Epstein, when I was his lawyer, he had no contact with Donald Trump.

13:01The butler, Kotrin, has told us that Trump offered Epstein a job in his first administration, that Epstein then turned it down. Do you think that claim is likely? It's impossible. Can you imagine a confirmation hearing of Jeffrey Epstein after he was convicted of having sex with an underage girl for money. It's absolutely out of the question. There's no credibility to that whatsoever. Of course not. The Trump administration is in a difficult place though, isn't it? Because of the promise it made during the election, the implication was that there's something explosive in there that could bring down the establishment.

13:38And therefore, it made Marker people want this even more. And now to go slow on it or to drag your heels, it just ramps up the conspiracy thinking, doesn't it? I agree. I think it does. Look, there is a list and there isn't a list. There's a list of people in FBI files of who various young women accuse. There is such a list. There is no list made up by Jeffrey Epstein of his so-called clients. So there's a lot of misleading names to things, a list. But there is information in there that hasn't been disclosed. I am personally aware of information that has been suppressed. And for good reason, because the information I'm aware of accuses somebody of something by somebody who doesn't have real credibility.

14:25So if you're going to release the accusation, you also have to release the information that would cast doubt on the credibility of the accusation. That's the complexity. Two of the people who have been dragged into this even further are Bill and Hillary Clinton, who have been asked to testify to a congressional committee, which is pursuing this precisely because Trump is perceived to have been trying to drop it. What was the nature of Bill Clinton's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein? And do you think we're likely to learn anything new from them? Well, I can give you firsthand information. I was having dinner at the home of Caroline Kennedy and her husband, Ed Schlossberg, and President Clinton was at that dinner.

15:06It was while he was president. The Secret Service agent came over and gave him a telephone and said, there's a call for you. He walked away for 10 or 15 minutes, had a call. We thought it was about national security. And then he came back and said, Alan, somebody wants to say hello to you. And he handed me the phone. And it was my client, Jeffrey Epstein, on the phone. He said, hi, Alan. I hope you have a good time in Martha's Vineyard. And he hung up. So I can attest to the fact that there was a 10-minute phone call between Jeffrey Epstein and President Clinton while he was president. But I have not seen anything that would suggest any impropriety on the part of either Hillary Clinton or Bill Clinton, nothing.

15:45Going back to our earlier conversation, I'm going to press you on this. I just want to understand as a layman why an ex-president would maintain a relationship with someone like Jeffrey Epstein. What does someone powerful get out of the company of someone like Jeffrey? Put the various accusations and various inferences of impropriety aside. What motivates these kind of people? What draws them together? Well, the key is Lady Lynn Rothschild. She is the person who introduced Jeffrey Epstein to Bill Clinton, to Hillary Clinton, to Chelsea Clinton, to everybody else. She was the person who made all the introductions.

16:24So please ask her. She is the one who went around Martha's Vineyard. She had a party at Martha's Vineyard in which she invited prominent people on the vineyard and invited Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Clinton. She had a very deep relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. She pleaded with me to meet with him and pleaded with other people to meet with him. And once the introductions were made, Jeffrey Epstein charmed people and gave some people investment advice. He gave me one bit of investment advice and I lost$100 ,000 as a result of it. Coming up, I talk to Mr. Dershowitz about Ghislaine Maxwell's role in all this and also about the nightmarish experience of being falsely accused of sex trafficking.

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18:34There is, of course, one other person we need to cover, and that is Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite who is now in prison for having helped Epstein with the sex trafficking of young girls. She was due to give evidence to Congress on Monday, although that has now been delayed. For our UK audience, can you explain how such a deposition would work and why they're asking Maxwell to speak to them? Well, she's called. She knows everything. She knows all the travel arrangements. She knows who went to the island. She knows who went to the house. She knows who had massages. By the way, whenever you went to Epstein's house, there were therapeutic massage therapists around, and he would urge people to have shoulder massages, neck massages.

19:16We have a photograph of somebody, a woman giving Bill Clinton a neck and soldier massage. That was very, very common. So Ghislaine Maxwell knows everything about that. They've known each other for a long, long, long time. And then their relationship ended as well. If she's called for a deposition, she then has the right to plead the Fifth Amendment. If she does, she can be given immunity. If she doesn't, she will persist in her right to answer any of these questions. I suspect they will give her immunity and that she will disclose a great deal of information, much of which is already in the public, but some of which is probably new information.

19:56She's currently doing 20 years. And after a meeting, I believe, with DOG officials, she was moved to a slightly gentler prison with better conditions. Is there any chance that in speaking to Congress, she could actually get those 20 years reduced? Not to Congress. Congress has no power to do that. Right. The only people who have the power to do it are the sentencing judge, the president through his commutation power. And I know that her lawyers are seeking that. Look, let's be very clear about one thing. If Jeffrey Epstein had remained alive, Ghislaine Maxwell would not be in prison today because she would have testified against him and she would have gotten a deal whereby she, in exchange for her testimony, would have received a lesser sentence or no sentence at all.

20:47She, in some respects, is serving Jeffrey Epstein's sentence. And a lot of people feel some sympathy for that and a lot of people don't. And so there will be an attempt by her very excellent lawyers, and I know her lawyers, to try to get something in exchange for her testimony. That's very common. There's two forms of currency that you have when you have a negotiation. The prisoner has as her form of currency information. The government has as its form of currency the ability to reduce the sentence. And often you get a quid pro quo. The prisoner gives the information in exchange for some reduction of sentence.

21:23In my 62 years of practicing in criminal law, I've done that dozens of times. It's very, very common. One thing the butler has said to us is that in his opinion, Jeffrey Epstein did not believe he was going to go to prison, that he was upbeat and positive about the future. And the butler cast doubt on whether or not this person would have taken their own life. How do you respond to that? Do you agree with that? No, because 92 or 93 % of people who are indicted in the Southern District of New York end up being convicted. It's very hard not to be convicted in the federal court in New York. So Epstein had to assume.

22:03He understood arithmetic, mathematics, probabilities. He understood that the high probability is that he would be denied bail, which he had been originally, that he'd be convicted and that he'd be sentenced to life imprisonment. So I think he faced the prospect of spending the rest of his life in a rat-infested prison and basically said, I can't deal with that. He was an atheist. He told me over and over again, I don't care about my legacy. I don't care about my reputation. The day I die, it's all over. I do everything only for my life. And so I think he had an incentive to terminate his life.

22:36I don't think he could have done it alone. I think he paid off prison guards. I think he paid off people in the prison to facilitate a suicide. But I don't think anybody came in and killed him. I don't know if you've seen the Tucker Carlson interview about Jeffrey Epstein that recently went up online, but he's drawing lines between Epstein, CIA, Mossad, et cetera. And that is feeding into where parts of the right are going in their worldview. They seem to have turned on Israel, and they're looking for connections between things, between people. Do you see any anti-Semitic quality to some of the Epstein conspiracy theory?

23:13Not that I'm saying Tucker Carlson is an anti-Semite, of course.

23:43known to be a very, very zealot Zionist. So, no, I don't think anti-Semitism drives the main points here. Now, you have to ask Tucker Carlson what his motivations are. There is absolutely no truth. Absolutely. I can tell you this categorically to the claim that he worked for the Mossad. I was a lawyer for the Mossad back 20 or 30 years ago when five Mossad agents were captured in Cyprus. And the head of the Mossad at that point retained me pro bono to help facilitate their release. I helped facilitate their release. I can tell you I have good contacts with Israeli military, Israeli intelligence.

24:24And if he had any connection with Israeli intelligence, I would know it. And I can tell you categorically he did not. We're all fantasizing now that the Epstein case might be the thing that brings Trump down. Do Do you see any likelihood of that? I don't think it will bring Trump down. I think Trump, for whatever you think about him politically, is quite popular in the country now. It will, of course, affect some people from the extreme right and the extreme left. And the questions will arise, why isn't everything being released? And there's an answer. And the Trump administration and the Justice Department can categorically state we're releasing everything now, subject only to redacting some names, perhaps, but everything should be released.

25:14The way to resolve this is total and complete transparency. As people say, sunlight is the best disinfectant, and this needs a disinfectant now, and sunlight is the answer. Mr. Jesuits, I want to finish on a personal note. In many ways, Epstein has poisoned much of American life. It's still poisoning the Trump administration. And it touched you personally. You were accused falsely by one of his victims, Virginia Jufri, of sex trafficking. You sued. She retracted the allegation. Your name is clear. She also famously accused Prince Andrew, another part of life that's been touched by the scandal.

25:51Jufri died by her own hand in April of this year. Can you tell me, what was it like to be accused falsely like this? And how do you feel about Virginia Giuffre now? Well, it was horrible to be falsely accused. It affected my grandchildren who were in college at the time. College students tend to believe everything they hear. But fortunately, she recanted everything, admitted she may have misidentified me, confused me with somebody else. And my name has been cleared completely. But nonetheless, people who don't like me still accuse me. I have people standing in front of my house on Martha's Vineyard with signs calling me a pedophile, calling me all kinds of terrible names.

26:32I mean, the accusation is that I had sex with this woman when she was 19 or 18. They still called me a pedophile. Categorically, I have not had sexual contact with any human being other than my wife from the day I met Jeffrey Epstein. And I think people who know me believe that. And I think my name has been cleared. But nonetheless, what I went through as a result of that false accusation has been absolutely horrible. And I suspect others have gone through. The reason my name was so prominent and featured is I fought back. I fought back because unlike some other people, I have nothing to hide.

27:06I was willing to sit for a deposition because people can ask me, have you ever had sex with anybody since the day you met Jeffrey Epstein other than your wife? And I could say under oath, no. How many other people could say that? Not very many. And that's why there was a threat, why so many people had to settle cases, because they couldn't be deposed. I could be deposed very proudly and assert my fidelity. So although it hurt me, it didn't hurt me nearly as much as it might have hurt people who did have something to hide. I never had something to hide. And as for Virginia Dufry herself, she did something which did great harm to you, unquestionably.

27:41She was also a victim herself of Epstein, and she was also clearly very traumatized and tortured. How do you feel about her personally now that she's died? Well, I never would say anything ill about somebody who's passed, particularly by her own hand. I have great and enormous sympathy for her and for her family. I wish her family well, and I wish this had never happened. But I'm not going to say anything negative about her, even though she said negative things about me. I will let her rest in peace. Alan Dershowitz, thank you very much. Thank you.

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