12:24 p.m.
Q:You engaged in a mass-media campaign to convince the world that Bradley Edwards and Professor Paul Cassell were unethical lawyers who had fabricated false charges against you, correct?
A:No, that’s not correct. I responded to press inquiries by telling the truth. My goal was to let the world know that Virginia Roberts’s allegations against me were totally false. These two stories appeared, as far as I can tell, in every single newspaper in the world and on every media, which was part of their plot and the plan of your clients, which is why they absurdly mentioned Prince Andrew, claiming in the most absurd way—that they mentioned him because he was trying to lobby prosecutors to get a reduced sentence for Jeffrey Epstein; they obviously put Prince Andrew in there in order to get massive publicity around the world. And every media in the world, practically, called me, from the BBC to CBS to ABC to CNN, and I responded to lies with the truth.
Q:And the truth that you attempted to convey was that Bradley Edwards and Professor Paul Cassell were unethical lawyers who fabricated false charges against you, right?
A:The truth that I intended to convey was that the charges against me were false and fabricated, that I never had any sexual contact—
Q:Fabricated by whom, sir?
A:Please don’t interrupt me….that I never had any sexual contact with Virginia Roberts. Because Professor Cassell insisted on conveying to the public that he was a former judge and that he was a professor and that he was using—improperly, in my view—the stationery and name of his university to add credibility to his claims, I felt that it was imperative for me to indicate that he was engaging in improper and unethical conduct. It would have been improper for me to have allowed his use of his credibility as a former federal judge, as a professor who uses, misuses, his university imprimatur—it was very important for me to attack the credibility of the messengers of the false information. And it was important for me to also remind the public that Bradley Edwards was a partner of [Scott] Rothstein, a man who is spending fifty years in jail for fraudulently creating a Ponzi scheme to sell Jeffrey Epstein cases that didn’t exist.
CHAPTER 67
Scott Rothstein: 2009
Scott Rothstein was a flashy Fort Lauderdale ex-lawyer who parked his collection of cars in an air-conditioned warehouse, kept a copy of the Torah on his desk, and hung a portrait of Al Pacino as Michael Corleone outside his office. One of his nicknames was TPOFD, short for “the Prince of Fucking Darkness,” and in private, he’d say things like: “Understand that the repercussions of engaging me could open the gates of hell. Understand that I am capable of evil far beyond anything your imagination could ever conjure up.”
Rothstein hosted receptions for prominent politicians—John McCain, Bobby Jindal, Arnold Schwarzenegger—and handed out hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time in campaign contributions. He gave millions more to charitable institutions: the Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital; the American Heart Association. By all outward appearances, he could afford it: seventy lawyers worked in his firm, which had offices in Florida, New York, and Venezuela. But Rothstein’s millions actually came from a $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme he’d been running since 2005.
In April of 2009, Bradley Edwards joined Rothstein’s firm. The lawyer brought his papers along, and Rothstein showed those pertaining to Epstein to potential investors. In exchange for a lump sum up front, Rothstein said, investors would receive a far larger chunk of money later, which Epstein would pay in future settlements.
Edwards and Rothstein both say that Edwards had no knowledge whatsoever of the Ponzi scheme. (Prosecutors, and the Florida Bar, agree.) Edwards left as soon as he caught wind of the scheme, in November of 2009. But the few months he spent in Rothstein’s company gave Dershowitz the opening he needed to pry open Virginia Roberts’s accusations.
It was at Edwards’s insistence, Dershowitz would say, as well as Paul Cassell’s, that Virginia Roberts added Dershowitz’s name to the list of men she claimed had abused her.
According to Dershowitz, he’d been pulled into a billion-dollar extortion plot Edwards had hatched. And for Edwards and Cassell, there had been a secondary benefit: Dershowitz had helped to work out Epstein’s confidential non-prosecution agreement with the government. By implicating him directly in Epstein’s abuse of underage women, Dershowitz claimed, Edwards and Cassell were trying to “open up” that agreement.
It might have been a Hail Mary pass on the part of Alan Dershowitz.
But the argument had its own internal logic.
The idea that Bradley Edwards and Paul Cassell were trying to blackmail Leslie Wexner—blackmail him for one billion dollars, no less—sounds highly improbable. But we do know for a fact that Edwards had worked with Rothstein—a man who’d been running his own billion-dollar con.
Edwards may not have known that Rothstein was taking his files on Jeffrey Epstein and showing them to investors. But Edwards’s proximity to Rothstein didn’t look good. It may not have been as damaging as Dershowitz’s close friendship with Epstein, but it was damaging nonetheless. It gave Dershowitz the opening he needed to make his argument. And the genius of Dershowitz’s argument was that it wasn’t necessarily predicated on an actual plot to blackmail Wexner. Maybe the thing Edwards was really after was the idea that a lawyer who helped work out Epstein’s non-prosecution agreement was also having sex with Virginia Roberts. That would give Edwards leverage in trying to crack the agreement open. And in that case, was it so hard to imagine him pressuring Virginia Roberts to add Dershowitz’s name to the list?
Perhaps it wasn’t, in this scenario. Virginia would have still felt reluctant to mention Dershowitz. If she was, there was the matter of the three hundred million dollars, and then some, that she would stand to gain. And the three hundred million or so that goes to set up a charity for battered women? If the scenario Dershowitz had thrown out was true, that would have been a genius move on Edwards’s part—the sort of detail that helps the whole psychological picture fall into place. If Virginia felt guilty for lying about Dershowitz, she could think of the thousands of battered women she’d end up helping.
All these possibilities seemed bizarre. And yet everything connected with Epstein’s story seemed to be bizarre.
Bill Clinton got the use of a jet out of Epstein—a trip to Africa. But he and Epstein weren’t bosom buddies.
As for Prince Andrew, we already know how he feels about women.
But what did Dershowitz get out of Epstein, aside from Epstein’s wise counsel on all the books he’d written?
One advantage Dershowitz had, as he laid out his argument, was that when it came to Jeffrey Epstein, all bets were off. He didn’t have to establish his innocence. All he had to do was make sure that the waters stayed muddy. The more complicated things seemed to be, the better they were for Dershowitz.
Thanks to Jeffrey Epstein’s actions, and the endlessly complicated cycle of suits and countersuits those actions inspired, those waters were very muddy indeed.
CODA
Scott Rothstein
On October 27, 2009, Florida’s governor, Charlie Crist, left Scott Rothstein a voice-mail message.
“Hey, Scott,” the governor said. “It’s Charlie, your favorite Greek governor. Hope you’re doing well, buddy. Just wanted to touch base and let you know I’m working Versace for November twenty-fourth, and it is going amazingly well—unbelievable, brother….Really enjoyed again seeing you and Kimmie and watch[ing] a little football and best to you guys from Carol and me. We love you. Take care. Bye-bye.”
That same day, Rothstein took a chartered Gulfstream V to Casablanca, Morocco. For a while, it seemed as if Rothstein was running. But a few days later, the same Gulfstream returned to Fort Lauderdale. The Ponzi king had decided to turn himself in.
The moment he did, he started to sing like a canary in return for a lenient sentence. Rothstein gave up dozens of associates—the list included people at his law firm, law enforcement officers, and his own wife
, Kimmie, who was arrested for hiding more than one million dollars’ worth of jewelry.
All in all, more than thirty people involved in Rothstein’s schemes were arrested and sentenced.
Thanks, in part, to his cooperation with the feds, his was the only Ponzi scheme in history in which all the victims recovered their money. In return, Rothstein was put into a witness protection program and is serving his fifty-year sentence anonymously, in an undisclosed prison location.
Alan Dershowitz
On November 10, 2015, Alan Dershowitz arrived at Shriver Hall, on the campus of Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, to talk about the Arab-Israeli conflict.
“The outlines for peace are so obvious,” he said. “There has to be a two-state solution.”
Fifteen minutes into the talk, a group of women—students belonging to a group called Hopkins Feminists—stood up in protest. Dressed all in black, with duct tape over their mouths, they held up a sign and marched out of the hall.
YOU ARE RAPE CULTURE, the sign read.
Afterward, a reporter for the student paper asked Dershowitz about Jeffrey Epstein and Epstein’s victims. Wasn’t it true that Dershowitz had implied that one of those victims was “asking for it?”
“I’m a defense attorney,” Dershowitz replied. “I have an obligation under the Constitution to provide a full and zealous defense to my clients. If I have failed to do all the things you had just listed, I could be disbarred. I could be found incompetent as counsel.”
He asked the reporter, “Would any defense lawyer not look on the websites, look on social networks, find out what the woman who was accusing my client was doing? We were able to disprove many of the charges, just like how I was able to disprove the charges against me. Falsely charging somebody with rape is a heinous thing to do. First of all, it creates horrors for the person who has been falsely accused. Second, it so hurts real rape victims because it makes it clear that some women lie for money. Our country, unlike others, requires that everybody be defended, and I’m going to continue to do that whether my clients are guilty or innocent. Let me tell you, most of my clients have been guilty. They deserve a zealous defense just as anybody else. I’m very proud of what I did for Jeffrey Epstein. If people don’t like the fact that I got a ‘good deal,’ that’s the job I do.”
The suits and countersuits Paul Cassell, Bradley Edwards, and Dershowitz filed against each other dragged on into the spring of 2016—reaching a crescendo with Dershowitz’s argument about the plot to blackmail Les Wexner. But on April 8, all the parties involved agreed to settle, issuing a joint statement that read: “Edwards and Cassell acknowledge that it was a mistake to have filed sexual misconduct accusations against Dershowitz; and the sexual misconduct accusations made in all public filings (including all exhibits) are hereby withdrawn. Dershowitz also withdraws his accusations that Edwards and Cassell acted unethically. Neither Edwards, Cassell, nor Dershowitz have any intention of repeating the allegations against one another.” Dershowitz also hired former FBI director Louis J. Freeh to do an independent investigation. Freeh concluded that the evidence his team reviewed refuted the accusations of sexual misconduct against Dershowitz.
For Alan Dershowitz, the long nightmare he’d had to endure as a result of his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein finally seemed to be over.
Ghislaine Maxwell
Trying to put her troubles with Epstein behind her, Ghislaine Maxwell took up a new calling.
“She’s doing something to save the oceans now,” a socialite says over the din of cocktail-party chatter at a private Palm Beach Club.
Maxwell’s nonprofit, the TerraMar Project, describes itself as “a platform for citizenship and transformation of the high seas.” Its focus is on cleaning up the eight million metric tons of plastic debris—garbage—that are dumped into the world’s oceans each year. (Sources say that an earlier enterprise, the Seed Media Group, was funded by Jeffrey Epstein in 2005 to the tune of two million dollars.)
“Is anybody here staying awake at night because they’re frightened about the ocean?” she asks in 2014 at a TEDx talk in Charlottesville, Virginia. “Are you scared about what could happen? Are you trying to think about what could you do that would help the ocean and all its myriad of troubles?”
But although her efforts on behalf of the environment are sincere and articulate, Ghislaine still appears in the society pages.
In 2010, she attends Chelsea Clinton’s wedding in Rhinebeck, New York.
In 2014, New York journalist Richard Johnson reports that she’s newly back from running in an Iditarod dogsled race in Alaska. “It’s hard to top Ghislaine Maxwell in the globe-trotting department,” he writes.
Upon her return, the president of the China Arts Foundation International hosts Maxwell at a dinner cooked by the former chef for Madame Chiang Kai-shek.
Sources say that Maxwell still maintains her warm relationship with the Clintons. She was never charged with a crime. And Maxwell has repeatedly denied all allegations made by Virginia Roberts—and continues to do so today. Through her lawyer, Maxwell says she’s had no connection to any criminal misconduct involving Virginia Roberts (or any other young woman) and Jeffrey Epstein. She claims that Virginia’s story about her experience as a “sex slave” has changed, significantly, over time—that with each telling, Virginia adds salacious details and names new public figures. Nevertheless, legal troubles for Maxwell recently began.
In 2015, Virginia Roberts filed a defamation suit against the woman she says recruited her to work at Epstein’s house on El Brillo Way. In January of 2016, Roberts filed additional papers, claiming that a defamation suit filed against Bill Cosby, another alleged sexual predator, was directly relevant to her case against Maxwell. In March, Maxwell filed an answer in court denying all of Roberts’s allegations and accusing Roberts of fabricating them for financial gain.
As of this writing, the suit is ongoing.
Prince Andrew
In January of 2016, Sunninghill Park—the twelve-bedroom estate that Sarah Ferguson and Prince Andrew once shared in the English county of Berkshire—was bulldozed.
Prince Andrew had long since sold the home, which he and Sarah had received as a gift after their 1986 wedding. He got into hot water when it was revealed that the buyer, a Kazakh billionaire named Timur Kulibayev, had paid three million pounds more than the home’s asking price.
For her part, Sarah Ferguson announced that she was moving into a thirteen-million-pound ski chalet in Switzerland.
It was a fitting end to the long, sometimes sordid story of the prince’s marriage. But it was not the end of the scandals that seemed always to be swirling around the prince.
On January 2, 2015, Virginia Roberts’s allegations about her relationship with the prince—and the photo of him with his arm around Roberts’s waist—appeared in the press. Prince Andrew was forced to cut short a skiing holiday to confer with his mother, the queen, and to issue a statement denying Roberts’s allegations—a step that was widely seen as being without precedent for a member of the royal family.
That same month, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the prince was again forced to “reiterate and to reaffirm” the repeated denials made by Buckingham Palace that he had any sort of sexual relationship with Roberts, who had announced in papers filed at the start of the year that Prince Andrew has a “sexual interest in feet.”
“My focus is on my work,” Prince Andrew said at the time.
Asked by a reporter, “Will you be making a statement?” the prince refused to answer.
A few days later, Virginia Roberts signed a sworn statement in which she said, “I did have sexual contact with him as I have described here—under oath. Given what he knows and has seen, I was hoping that he would simply voluntarily tell the truth about everything. I hope my attorneys can interview Prince Andrew under oath about the contacts and that he will tell the truth.”
According to several reports, Roberts’s lawyers had written to
the prince, asking him to respond to her allegations in court. Reportedly, Buckingham Palace refused delivery of the letter.
“I knew he was a member of the British royal family, but I just called him ‘Andy,’” Roberts had said in her statement. “I got news from Maxwell that I would be meeting a prince. Later that day, Epstein told me I was meeting a ‘major prince.’ Epstein told me ‘to exceed’ everything I had been taught. He emphasized that whatever Prince Andrew wanted, I was to make sure he got.”
Signing her name to the document, Roberts wrote, “I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct.”
That spring, Prince Andrew got a rare break: a federal judge in South Florida ordered that the allegations Roberts made be stricken from civil-court records. “At this juncture in the proceedings, these lurid details are unnecessary,” the judge concluded. Once again, Buckingham Palace vehemently denied the prince’s involvement in any activities, sexual or otherwise, pertaining to Roberts. But that same year, reports leaked that the BBC program Panorama was working on an in-depth investigation into the prince’s dealings with Epstein and Roberts.
As of this writing, the investigation has yet to air.
Barry Krischer
“I have no intention of being dragged into that conversation,” Barry Krischer said in 2016 when contacted via telephone and asked about Jeffrey Epstein.