{"id":39166,"date":"2016-05-31T15:29:25","date_gmt":"2016-05-31T19:29:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=39166"},"modified":"2016-05-31T15:31:43","modified_gmt":"2016-05-31T19:31:43","slug":"documents-show-earlier-effort-to-link-dershowitz-to-epstein-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=39166","title":{"rendered":"Alan Dershowitz and the Epstein Plea Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Documents Show Earlier Effort to Link Dershowitz to Epstein Scandal<\/h1>\n
\n
By JACOB GERSHMAN<\/div>\n
WSJ.com<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Alan Dershowitz \/ ASSOCIATED PRESS<\/p><\/div>\n

More than four years before underage sex claims against Alan Dershowitz turned up<\/a> in a court document, a lawyer for his accuser sought to link the famed attorney to the Jeffrey Epstein sex-abuse scandal, according to court documents.<\/p>\n

In \u00a02010, a lawyer for alleged victims of Mr. Epstein described Mr. Dershowitz in court papers as a potential witness to sex abuses committed by Mr. Epstein, a money manager whom federal prosecutors suspected of abusing dozens of underage girls.<\/p>\n

Mr. Dershowitz, who was friends with Mr. Epstein, had earlier helped him negotiate a controversial non-prosecution deal with federal prosecutors.<\/p>\n

Bradley Edwards<\/a>, a Florida lawyer who at the time was representing women in civil suits against Mr. Epstein, drew attention to an earlier deposition by a Miami man who worked for Mr. Epstein at the financier\u2019s Palm Beach mansion.<\/p>\n

That man, Alfredo Rodriguez, was employed as Mr. Epstein\u2019s house manager in 2004 and 2005, according to court transcripts. He claimed in a 2009 deposition, taken in separate litigation, that Mr. Dershowitz visited Mr. Epstein\u2019s Florida house \u201ctwo or three\u201d times over several months. Mr. Rodriguez said some of the same \u201cyoung ladies\u201d whom he had witnessed coming into Mr. Epstein\u2019s mansion for purported \u201cmassages\u201d were also at the house while Mr. Dershowitz was present, according to a transcript.<\/p>\n

Mr. Rodriguez said he didn\u2019t know how old the women were and said he didn\u2019t know if they gave Mr. Dershowitz massages.<\/p>\n

Mr. Dershowitz, in an interview with Law Blog on Friday, took issue with Mr. Rodriguez\u2019s assertions. \u201cNever once did I see a young, underage person or anybody who was arguably underage. I never saw any young girls. I never saw any crimes committed,\u201d he said. Mr. Dershowitz said he \u201cwas never in the presence of any person who came to give Jeffrey a massage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Dershowitz, who is 76, told Law Blog that he recalled visiting Mr. Epstein\u2019s Palm Beach home \u201cmaybe four times\u201d in his life, including a week-long stay with his wife, children and grandchildren around 2005. He said Mr. Epstein had lent him the house for that visit and that he never ventured into \u201cJeffrey\u2019s part of the house,\u201d but kept to guest areas. During other visits, he said, he was \u201calmost always in the company of legal-team members or serious adults.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Edwards in 2010 said that Mr. Rodriguez\u2019s deposition gave him the legal grounds to depose Mr. Dershowitz. But that deposition never happened.<\/p>\n

Years later, Mr. Edwards and his co-counsel Paul Cassell would claim that Mr. Dershowitz, at Mr. Epstein\u2019s urging, had sex with an underage woman identified in court papers as \u201cJane Doe #3\u2033.<\/p>\n

The claim \u2014 which Mr. Dershowitz has sworn under oath is false<\/a> \u2014 surfaced 11 days ago in a motion<\/a> filed by the two lawyers in a lawsuit against the federal government over the 2007 deal it struck with Mr. Epstein.<\/p>\n

The agreement allowed Mr. Epstein to avoid federal prosecution. Messrs. Edwards and Cassell are seeking to invalidate it, claiming it was a sweetheart deal negotiated behind the backs of victims. As part of the agreement, Mr. Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to a state charge and served about 13 months in prison.<\/p>\n

Shortly after he was deposed, Mr. Rodriguez landed in legal trouble himself when he tried to cash in on potentially important evidence he found at Mr. Epstein\u2019s home \u2014 a journal containing names and numbers of dozens of possible sexual-abuse victims and other associates of Mr. Epstein\u2019s. Instead of turning over the journal in response to a subpoena, as required by law, he tried to sell it for $50,000. In 2010, he was convicted of obstruction of justice and sentenced to 18 months with two years of supervised release. (An unrelated gun charge made him ineligible for a lighter sentence.)<\/p>\n

Mr. Rodriguez died two weeks ago after a battle with cancer at the age of 60, according to his wife.<\/p>\n

In court papers, the federal prosecutor in Florida who negotiated Mr. Epstein\u2019s 2007 plea deal stated that had the government known about the journal sooner, it might have dealt with Mr. Epstein more harshly.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s just something that doesn\u2019t look quite right for Mr. Epstein\u2019s house man to get a greater sentence for what he\u2019s done than Mr. Epstein did for\u00a0what he\u2019s done, which is substantially worse,\u201d Dave Lee Brannon, a public defender who represented Mr. Rodriguez, told the judge at his client\u2019s sentencing hearing in 2010<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cMr Epstein and the Government entered a federal Non-Prosecution Agreement in 2007,\u201d Martin Weinberg, a lawyer for Mr. Epstein, told Law Blog on Friday. \u201cMr. Epstein has fully honored its terms and conditions and is not in anyway a party to this ongoing civil litigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

___
\nhttp:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/law\/2015\/01\/09\/documents-show-effort-to-link-dershowitz-to-epstein-scandal\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Documents Show Earlier Effort to Link Dershowitz to Epstein Scandal By JACOB GERSHMAN WSJ.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}