On January 9, MintPress News probed a newly unsealed tranche of documentation on official police investigations into and civil lawsuits leveled against Jeffrey Epstein – specifically, papers mentioning Alan Dershowitz. At that time, the veteran Zionist legal activist had been mooted as Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s top pick to defend Tel Aviv at the International Court of Justice in a case brought by South Africa over the Gaza genocide before almost immediately being dumped due to wide-ranging public backlash.
That Netanyahu considered Dershowitz a viable candidate for the role at all spoke volumes. Both about Tel Aviv’s total lack of self-awareness and qualms over negative publicity, but also Dershowitz’s intimate connections to Israel’s darkest recesses. His role in defending notorious serial rapist Harvey Weinstein in court, and negotiating Epstein’s extraordinary 2008 Non-Prosecution Agreement, are well-known. Yet, obvious questions about whether and how these activities centrally placed him in a web of intelligence-connected blackmail intrigue have never been asked.
When the fresh batch of Epstein files dropped last month, Dershowitz – about whom allegations of pedophilia have abounded for many years – was quick to boast of how his name appeared 137 times in the material while claiming the contents fully exonerated him of any wrongdoing. Even if true – and, as MintPress News’ previous investigation outlined, that is far from certain – certain documents could point to Dershowitz’s complicity in and knowledge of a very different sexual criminality.
‘Leave It Alone’
The origins of Dershowitz’s longrunning friendship with Epstein – or the version he “likes” to tell – are revealed in a July 2019 New Yorker longread. Per Dershowitz, he was introduced to Epstein by his close associate, Lady Rothschild, Lynn Forester. In 1996, she suggested he meet an “interesting autodidact.” As an individual with “an enduring fascination with fame, society, and wealth,” he eagerly accepted the invitation.
Epstein flew to Martha’s Vineyard and visited Dershowitz, bringing a bottle of champagne. “The two men found common interests,” The New Yorker recorded, talking about “science…academia…Harvard.” They became close friends, and in September of that year, Epstein introduced Dershowitz to his “mentor,” billionaire Leslie Wexner. Details of Epstein’s purported wealth management business remain sketchy today, to the point some question if it existed in the first place and how, given the distinct lack of a typical paper trail. Wexner was his only named “client.”
Epstein and Dershowitz traveled to Wexner’s 300-acre estate in Ohio to celebrate their host’s fifty-ninth birthday. Other guests included astronaut turned senator John Glenn and former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. Dershowitz’s assessment was that he served as Epstein’s “intellectual gift” to Wexner. Epstein was ever-keen to patronize and be perceived as a patron to academia, particularly Harvard, where Dershowitz taught law from 1964 to 2013. He, sometimes with Wexner, funded new buildings and research programs at the University while serving on assorted advisory boards there.
Accordingly, many eminent figures in academia, science and technology have been linked to Epstein, rousing suspicions they were among his VIP “clients,” for whom he arranged sexual encounters with underage victims. In explaining why the billionaire was treated so leniently in 2008, then-Florida District Attorney Alexander Acosta, who oversaw the prosecution, claims he was told Epstein “belonged to intelligence” and thus was above his pay grade. State authorities were instructed to “leave it alone” as a result.
Intensive investigations into Epstein and his personal and professional networks by MintPress contributor Whitney Webb amply suggest that the “intelligence” to which he “belonged” was Israel’s Mossad. In her landmark, two-part work One Nation Under Blackmail, she concludes Epstein sexually compromised luminaries within U.S. politics, technology, science, and finance, with Mossad and the Zionist cause the “most likely beneficiaries of his blackmail schemes.” This connivance went some way to furthering Tel Aviv’s domestic and foreign policy goals.
Speaking to MintPress, Webb says Dershowitz “maintains never having known of Epstein’s deviant sexual behavior and crimes, and apparently overlooked his obvious affiliations with intelligence and organized crime, possibly because they shared a devotion to Zionism.” She adds that Dershowitz avowedly didn’t investigate “any red flags around Epstein,” as they were introduced by Lady Rothschild, a member of the family’s influential banking dynasty via marriage:
Dershowitz’s account of his introduction to Epstein suggests he deferred to Rothschild’s power and influence, over his own judgment. Some have observed how Dershowitz’s perspective is affected by issues about which he is very emotional, like Zionism. He has shown vindictiveness toward those who have publicly challenged his Zionist leanings, such as Norman Finkelstein, and even taken quotes of an Epstein victim far out of context in an attempt to brand them as anti-Semitic.”
‘Credibility Enhanced’
In this context, Dershowitz’s dealings with Virginia Guiffre (nee Roberts), who accused him and Epstein of sickening offenses, take on an acutely sinister character. Meanwhile, his already dubious denials of knowing about “Epstein’s deviant sexual behavior and crimes” before and during their extended time as close confidantes are rendered all the more dubious.
In December 2014, Giuffre sued Dershowitz, claiming Epstein arranged for him to rape her at least six times, starting from when she was just 16. The legal action dragged on until November 2022, when Giuffre abruptly dropped the suit, contending she may have mistakenly misidentified her rapist. In the intervening time, parallel suits Giuffre brought against Epstein’s “madam” Ghislaine Maxwell and British Royal Prince Andrew, who also allegedly assaulted her, were settled in her favor to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Several files released in January pertain to Giuffre’s jettisoned legal action, and a case her lawyers brought against Dershowitz after the Harvard law professor tried to have them both disbarred for their pro bono support of her while launching a “massive public media assault on [their] reputation and character.” In September 2015, the unsealed records show that Dershowitz argued in court submissions that, in suing him for defamation, Giuffre’s lawyers “somehow waived” attorney-client privilege with Giuffre.
Dershowitz resultantly filed a motion to compel them “to produce documents” and any material in their possession related to their client. In other words, he was determined to get his hands on sensitive, private information and communications involving his accuser, typically protected from legal disclosure. The presiding judge ultimately rejected these demands, condemning Dershowitz’s cynical effort to overturn one of the “oldest recognized privileges” in U.S. law for his own benefit.
Undeterred, Dershowitz subpoenaed Giuffre to provide a sworn deposition, as the defamation action against him was ongoing. On the stand, she was relentlessly blitzed with queries concerned with compelling her to reveal information protected by attorney-client privilege and repeatedly invited her to waive those rights. In every instance, she declined. Giuffre’s lawyers’ action was eventually settled for an undisclosed sum in April 2016.
One might conclude Dershowitz was guilty as sin, desperately flailing to ascertain any dirt his accuser and her attorneys might have on him before defending serious accusations in court. This reading may well be accurate – although an alternative or even complementary interpretation could be that the Zionist legal apparatchik sought to identify what Giuffre knew more generally about Epstein’s pedophilic conspiracy in order to warn his friend and client. And perhaps Mossad, their clandestine sponsor.
This suspicion is somewhat reinforced by a glaring, never hitherto acknowledged contradiction. Throughout January 2015, while being sued by Giuffre for sexual abuse, Dershowitz repeatedly took to mainstream U.S. TV news networks, including ABC, daring her to reiterate her allegations against him publicly on the same channels so that he could sue her for defamation. When she failed to appear, the Harvard legal professor charged Giuffre’s silence greatly undermined her credibility, demonstrating her allegations were libelous and untrue.
Yet, in late 2019, a recording of an ABC News anchor leaked, in which she openly discussed how a planned 2015 interview with Giuffre didn’t go ahead due to direct pressure from her superiors – and none other than Dershowitz himself. He subsequently acknowledged the veracity of that account several times, contemporaneously telling NPR he “did not want to see [Giuffre’s] credibility enhanced by ABC.” Again, this is extremely sinister behavior. Was Dershowitz simply attempting to protect himself, or Epstein – and the wider blackmail intrigue?
‘Frequent Guest’
As Whitney Webb tells Mintpress, Epstein was not the only “powerful Zionist accused of sexual misdeeds” in Dershowitz’s professional and social milieu. Harvey Weinstein, a veteran Hollywood film producer, was in October 2017 accused of industrial-scale rape, assault, harassment, and other non-consensual sexual conduct spanning a 30-year period. By the time of his arrest in May the next year, more than 80 women in the film industry had accused him of heinous acts.
In the intervening time, it was revealed that Weinstein had availed himself of the services of Black Cube, a private intelligence company founded by former Mossad operatives, to surveil, influence, and intimidate his litany of accusers and journalists investigating his shocking history of sex abuse, in order to suppress the scandal. A veritable army of “ex” Israeli spies and chaos agents, often using false identities, collected a wealth of sensitive information on dozens of individuals, including their personal sexual histories.
For example, one Black Cube operative, working undercover as a women’s rights supporter, approached film star Rose MacGowan, who was assaulted by Weinstein in a hotel room at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival, claiming they were interested in hiring her for a formal dinner speech. Their conversations were secretly recorded and then shared with Weinstein. And perhaps Dershowitz, who represented the serial rapist in his February 2020 trial, which landed the disgraced mogul in jail for 23 years.
Webb adds that Weinstein was connected to Black Cube by another powerful Zionist and Epstein associate – former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak. Barak has since denied having any connection whatsoever with the company or its associates. Yet, he has a private intelligence firm staffed by “ex”-Mossad operatives all of his own – Toka. In late 2022, it was announced that the company had innovated tech capable of hacking into and altering both recorded and live CCTV footage.
It is deeply disturbing that Toka has mastered this abstruse art, and one can only wonder why. In the Occupied Territories, CCTV footage has frequently been used to save falsely accused Palestinians from jail. Even more sinister answers may lie in Barak’s extremely close and long-running friendship with Epstein. It has been reported that the former Israeli premier was a “frequent guest, almost a fixture” at the billionaire pedophile’s expansive New York mansion before his mysterious death, reportedly by suicide, in 2019.
Immediately before that fateful day, Barak approached Steve Bannon, former White House chief strategist and senior counselor to Donald Trump, asking them to assist in a PR blitz to exonerate Epstein. He may well have had more cynical, self-interested motivations, too. He is said to have once joked to his friend that the pair had “nothing to worry about” and they were “safe” from repercussions. In what context they reportedly made those remarks isn’t certain, although Giuffre claims Barak raped her.
She has also accused wealthy Victoria’s Secret owner Leslie Wexner, whose Foundation paid Barak hundreds of thousands of dollars from 2004 to 2006 for just two research papers, one of which wasn’t completed. In January 2021, Israel’s High Court rejected a petition to investigate these payments formally. Whether this financing had another, darker purpose entirely is an open and obvious question.
Multiple witnesses and victims alike have claimed Epstein’s many lavish residences were equipped with hidden cameras and microphones, used to record sexual assaults and rapes by politicians and high-profile figures he courted. At least one source contends this footage, along with other incriminating material, was collated in personalized dossiers on Epstein’s clients for the purposes of blackmail. The billionaire’s eventual capture and the risk his powerful paymasters could, in turn, be exposed to means that Mossad would likely be wary about funding such a real-life operation again.
The CIA is known to have concocted numerous plots to forge sex tapes implicating foreign leaders. Toka’s tech would provide an alternative means of achieving this same Mephistophelian end, with enhanced layers of plausible deniability and little risk of public exposure. And if that were to happen, Alan Dershowitz would almost inevitably be on hand to secure Barak and his underlings’ sweetheart sentences.
Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.
