OK. Just a couple of reminders about who it is that has been called in a desperate attempt to provide some legitimately to the team of lawyers standing in front of the Senate trying to distract their “jurors” in deciding the fate of the President.
Alan Dershowitz is a nearly ancient defense /appellate attorney that has defended many heinous criminals, some of them famous, over the decades of his career. He appears to revel in the spotlight, is cantankerous and argumentative. A natural for the Trump defense team and he’s ready.
As he wrote in his 2013 memoir, “Taking the Stand,” “If you don’t have the law or legal facts on your side, argue your case in the court of public opinion.”
But perhaps those in the position of defending Donald Trump would be better off taking a pass…having their client’s name and case added to Dershowitz’s list of infamous clients:
- Jeffrey Epstein (rape, human trafficking, sexual abuse)
- O.J. Simpson (murder of his wife and friend)
- Klaus von Bulow (overdosing his wife on insulin & putting her in a coma for decades)
- Mike Tyson (rape of a beauty contestant)
- Porn star Harry Reems (abuse of porn actress during filming)
- Leona Helmsley (tax fraud and money laundering)
- Reverend Jim Bakker (defrauding his church parishioners of millions)
- Michael Milken (securities fraud, tax evasion)
A fine, fine, group of folks, to be sure.
It’s not a complete surprise that Dershowitz would find himself swimming in a swamp of such “deplorables”. Described by those who knew him as a young man describe him as being aggressive, aloof, arrogant. But such descriptions are obviously subjective matters of opinion, of course. His actions during the divorce from his wife Sue, however, have been documented as the acrimonious separation proceeded.
Sue filed for divorce in 1973, and they finally went to court in early 1976. She had intended to file for joint custody and a psychiatrist specially brought in to evaluate her disposition initially determined that she was fit and eligible for custody. Dershowitz, however, demanded sole custody of the kids. Several weeks after the psychiatric evaluation, after Dershowitz continued to maintain that his wife was not fit, and even despite the judge’s written opinion that Dershowitz’s behavior toward his wife“negatively affected the plaintiff’s health to the extent that she required medical treatment and briefly some psychiatric therapy”. The “case” against her included testimony from her best friend who was by then married to Dershowitz’s younger brother. He won full custody.
In addition to denying his wife access to their children, during the support phase of the proceedings, he was equally brutal.
When Sue “maintained that Dershowitz had substantially understated his income,” Dershowitz went to the Judge, offering “proof” of rather paltry financial capabilities.
He got affidavits from two different doctors stating that he had developed hypertension from working too much and too strenuously, and one of those docs recommended that he “slow down from his present hectic professional pace.” He would therefore not be able to provide alimony of any substantial amount, and the judge agreed. He decided that Dershowitz should pay Sue a modest sum for five years and nothing beyond that.
In the meantime, Dershowitz had developed a reputation as a savvy, if unusual, defense and appeals lawyer. By the time he was 28, he became a full professor at Harvard and an active member of the National Board of the ACLU.
In 1982, while Dershowitz was a professor at the Harvard School of Law met the woman who would be his second wife. They moved in together, and were married in 1986; They bought a lovely house in historic Cambridge and vacationed on Martha’s Vineyard.
In the meantime, Sue moved to New York, worked as a research librarian for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union and drowned in the East River on New Year’s Eve, 1983, in an apparent suicide.
The curious relationship he shared with child molester/trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, with whom he shared a great many meetings, parties, conversations, etc. offers a glimpse, perhaps, into the nature of Dershowitz’s attitude toward the criminal mind, especially when it is the mind of a man.
“In Dershowitz’s view, men who are accused of rape, there has got to be a defense,” one female student from the 1991 class recalled. “He had convoluted ways of thinking about how men could misinterpret a lack of consent.”
In a Los Angeles Times opinion piece in the early 1990’s he even argued against statutory-rape laws. His position? That sure, sex between adults and very young children should be criminally sanctioned, but sex between adults and teens over the age of puberty, at about 15 years old, should have no such sanctions, since “voluntary sex is so common in their age group.”
In 2015, Dershowitz settled a lawsuit between himself and Virginia
Giuffre, one of Epstein’s “employees” who claimed that she’d had sex with several of Epstein’s friends, including six encounters with Dershowitz.
This is one of the lawyers defending the President of the United States of America. I’m comforted knowing his defense team includes persons of such esteemed character, aren’t you??
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