Dershowitz joins Miami Herald effort to get full list of Epstein ‘John Does’ unsealed

Famed lawyer Alan Dershowitz has asked the judge in a previously settled and sealed libel suit involving Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime girlfriend, to unseal a full list of “J. Does” — associates of the sex-trafficking multimillionaire who were named in the course of the litigation.

The judge this week unsealed the file — and released the first 1,000 pages of documents — but did not provide a who’s-who index of those who had came up as witnesses, victims or colleagues of the notorious couple.

Dershowitz, who was a friend of and lawyer for the late financier, is piggybacking on a motion made by the Miami Herald, which spent years in court trying to get the full, unredacted file unsealed, finally succeeding this week.

The Herald’s legal effort followed publication of a series of Miami Herald stories, Perversion of Justice, that rekindled interest in Epstein, who was arrested 15 years ago for abusing girls at his Palm Beach estate, pleaded to minor charges and served a short term in the local jail before reentering society, embraced by celebrities and business leaders.

The libel lawsuit was filed in 2015 by Virginia Giuffre. She said Maxwell, a British socialite, and Epstein recruited and sexually abused hundreds of girls and young women from 2001 to 2018, including herself. Giuffre said Maxwell and Epstein also loaned her out to friends and associates for their sexual gratification.

When Maxwell accused her of lying, Giuffre sued.

The suit was settled in 2017, but much of the evidence that could fill in details about Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation — as well as the wealthy and prominent people with whom he associated — was sealed. Wednesday’s record release, the first of several batches, was the result of a court intervention by the Herald and its parent company, McClatchy. In the cache, names were sprinkled throughout the documents, making it difficult to determine who played what role in Epstein’s activities.

“Releasing the complete list of names and pseudonyms will avoid the spread of incorrect information that may arise from trying to unweave the partial disclosures, and will enable the public and press to understand this Court’s reasoning,” wrote Christine N. Walz of Holland & Knight, the Herald’s lawyer.

READ MORE: First look at Jeffrey Epstein ‘John Doe’ files: Clinton, Copperfield, Trump and more

Dershowitz agreed.

“Dershowitz has long advocated for unsealing and transparency in this matter, “ wrote his attorney, Imran H. Ansari. “To circumvent potential reporting inaccuracies and misplaced assumptions, the unsealing... will be beneficial to the Intervenors, media, and public alike, and will assist with the free flow of information into the public domain in accordance with the Court’s prior Order(s) pertaining to unsealing.”

Dershowitz intervened in the lawsuit early on — after Giuffre named him as one of her abusers. The longtime Harvard law professor and prolific author vehemently denied ever having met Giuffre, and he advocated for the documents in the lawsuit to be unsealed at that time in order to exonerate himself.

He and Giuffre settled civil litigation in 2022 in which she admitted that she may have mistakenly identified him as one of the men she was directed to have sex with as a teenager.

Dershowitz helped negotiate a lenient plea deal for Epstein in 2008, when Epstein was accused sexually exploiting more than a dozen high school girls at his mansion. Although he served 13 months in the Palm Beach County jail, he spent most of his days on work release.

After the Herald’s investigation, Epstein was re-arrested in 2019 on sex trafficking charges in New York. He was found hanging by the neck in his Manhattan jail cell a month later. His death was ruled to be self-inflicted.

Maxwell was charged with sex trafficking, convicted by a jury in New York and is currently serving 20 years.

The Miami Herald’s original “Perversion of Justice” series:

• How a future Trump Cabinet member gave a serial sex abuser the deal of a lifetime

• Cops worked to put serial sex abuser in prison. Prosecutors worked to cut him a break

• Even from jail, sex abuser manipulated the system. His victims were kept in the dark

• Sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein was surrounded by powerful people. Here’s a sampling

• For years, Jeffrey Epstein abused teen girls, police say. A timeline of his case