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Alan Dershowitz Denies Epstein Rape Accusations And Defends Role In Sweetheart Deal
"I did not want to see [Giuffre's] credibility enhanced by ABC," Dershowitz says.
In a December 2014 court filing in another accuser's lawsuit, Giuffre had alleged Dershowitz was among the prominent men Epstein had instructed her to have sex with when she was a teenager. In early 2015, Dershowitz had rejected her account out of hand in his own court filings. (The nature of his denials were such that Giuffre sued Dershowitz for defamation earlier this year. Dershowitz has asked the court to dismiss that lawsuit.)
By September 2015, ABC soon had another possible news hook. Giuffre filed a defamation lawsuit against Maxwell in which she alleged specifics of just how, in her account, she was recruited and abused by Epstein and Maxwell. (Maxwell, again, denies those claims.) Boies, who represents Giuffre, told the Miami Herald that case was settled in 2017.
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Jeffrey Epstein's Former Business Associate: I Want To Assist Victims
ABC episodically covered the various lawsuits. Yet it did not broadcast the interview with Giuffre.
"I found [Giuffre] to be very t***hful and credible," says the Herald's Brown, who interviewed her several years later for the paper's coverage. "There were other things in the record that supported her story. So I didn't have any qualms about it."
Brown said a fear of being sued was a constant for reporters on the Epstein story.
The network says its decision not to broadcast the interview four years ago reflected proper journalistic care.
"At the time, not all of our reporting met our standards to air, but we never stopped investigating the story," ABC News spokeswoman Heather Riley said in a statement sent to NPR this week. "Over the past year we have put a whole team on this investigation, which will air in the coming months."
The #MeToo movement has affected journalistic practices in handling such circumstances.
In October 2017, more than two years after the Giuffre interview, ABC's Diane Sawyer interviewed the actor Ashley Judd about her accusations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.
At that time, Judd had not yet filed a lawsuit against Weinstein and he did not yet face criminal charges. Yet ABC viewers heard Judd's accusations in full.
Giuffre now lives in Australia with her husband and children.
"I was defeated, once again, by the very people I spoke out against and once again, my voice was silenced," Giuffre tells NPR. "I could not believe that a formidable network like ABC had backed down and given in."
The New York Times
Last August, reporters at The New York Times and other publications received word Tesla founder Elon Musk was relying on Epstein to advise him on whom to consider hiring as board chair or chief executive.
Editors at the Times sent business columnist James Stewart to talk to Epstein. "I wondered why would Musk, if this is true, be using a registered sex offender to recruit new members to the board," Stewart recently told The Kicker, a podcast from the Columbia Journalism Review.
Given Epstein's criminal history, the off-the-record conversation took a surprising turn. As Stewart wrote last week: "He said that criminalizing sex with teenage girls was a cultural aberration and that at times in history it was perfectly acceptable."
Yet Stewart was not the editors' first choice to interview Epstein further.
Initially, they had asked Landon Thomas Jr., a veteran financial correspondent who had been at the Times for 16 years.
Thomas knew Epstein fairly well — having first written about the financier, back in 2002, just before he joined the paper. Thomas had considered him a valued source ever since, even after Epstein's release from jail for sex offenses. Just how valued turned out to be a problem for the reporter and the paper.
Epstein's Indictment Covers 17 Years Of Alleged Sexual Abuse Of Minors
This account is based on interviews with five current and former New York Times staffers with knowledge of the episode. They spoke on condition they not be directly named; while the Times confirmed the contours of the incident, it declined to authorize its journalists to comment. Thomas also declined to comment for this story.
But Thomas f**gged a problem. He told his editors Epstein had been a great source for years and had become something of a friend as well. How close? Thomas had solicited a $30,000 contribution from Epstein for a Harlem cultural center, he told them.
Thomas suggested Epstein was just a source of information, not someone he would report on or investigate. His editors were aghast. They rejected the distinction he was trying to make.
And his editors benched him instantly from any professional contact with Epstein.
"Soliciting a donation to a personal charity is a clear violation of the policy that governs Times journalists' relationships with their sources," said the Times Co.'s chief spokesperson, Eileen Murphy. "As soon as editors became aware of it, they took action."
NPR found tax records that reflect a $30,000 donation in 2017 to a Montessori preschool called O'Gorman Garden in Harlem from a foundation based in the U.S. Virgin Islands that had previously been controlled by Epstein.
Colleagues pulled up his clippings. Thomas had not written frequently about Epstein. But several Times staffers say they were appalled by a piece they found.
For a 2008 profile, Thomas had traveled to Epstein's private isle in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The piece ran just before Epstein submitted to authorities in Florida for incarceration.
It included this lyrical passage: "As his legal troubles deepened, Mr. Epstein gazed at the azure sea and the lush hills of St. Thomas in the distance, poked at a lunch of crab and rare steak prepared by his personal chef, and tried to explain how his life had taken such a turn," Thomas wrote. "He likened himself to Gulliver shipwrecked among the diminutive denizens of Lilliput."
The article largely presented Epstein as someone who solicited prostitutes, not committed sex crimes against minors. (Federal agents had by then identified several dozen possible victims.)
Rereading the story in August 2018, Thomas' colleagues recalled the exclusives their paper broke that propelled the #MeToo awakening. This, they say, was an embarrassment.
By early January 2019, Thomas was gone from the Times, though the inspiration for his departure was not shared with the public.
Last weekend, the paper reported on a public apology by one of its corporate directors, Joichi Ito, who had landed millions of dollars from Epstein for the institute he leads, the MIT Media Lab. In a tweet, the paper's media editor, Jim Windolf, said that Ito had sought funds from Epstein "a few years after Epstein got out of the Palm Beach County Jail."
NPR's Cat Schuknecht contributed reporting to this story.
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