Attorney Alan Dershowitz told Megyn Kelly on her podcast that he believes disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide, but had likely “paid off some guards to turn off the cameras and facilitate” his death in prison.
In a Wednesday episode of The Megyn Kelly Show, Dershowitz discussed his legal career, which included being a part of O.J. Simpson’s defense team, and his relationship with Epstein.
Dershowitz joined Epstein’s legal team in 2006, when federal prosecutors investigated Epstein for having sex with underage girls. Epstein was first charged with operating a sex ring of underage girls out of his Palm Beach, Florida home in 2005.
NEW YORK, NY – JULY 08: US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman announces charges against Jeffery Epstein on July 8, 2019 in New York City. Epstein will be charged with one count of sex trafficking of minors and one count of conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking of minors. (Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)
“I would not have represented him a second time,” Dershowitz told Kelly. “I terminated my relationship with him completely once I negotiated the deal. I was never ever his friend or acquaintance once I knew what he had done or was accused of doing.” (RELATED: Alan Dershowitz On Epstein, Impeachment, And Clearing His Name In The Era Of #MeToo)
Dershowitz helped broker a “sweetheart deal” for Epstein in 2008. Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution and registered as a sex offender.
“Epstein hated the deal,” Dershowitz added in the interview. “He didn’t want to pay the legal fee, he said ‘Why am I having to register as a sex offender.’ He actually fired me because he thought he could get a better deal, and he did get a better deal [from the state].”
In this handout provided by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Jeffrey Epstein poses for a sex offender mugshot after being charged with procuring a minor for prostitution on July 25, 2013 in Florida. (Florida Department of Law Enforcement via Getty Images)
Toward the end of the episode, Kelly asks him the “$64,000” question about whether Epstein’s death in August 2019 was actually a suicide. Dershowitz responded:
“I think he probably did. But I think that he probably paid off some guards to turn off the cameras and facilitate. I don’t think he saw that he wanted to spend the rest of his life having lived in all these mansions in a rat infested prison. And I think he said to himself — this is just surmise because I, you know, I didn’t know him well, and I didn’t have any contact with him the last decade of his life or so — I suspect he said to himself, look, I’ve lived my 60 something years, I’ve done my things. It’s over. I don’t want to spend the next 20 years in prison. So I’m going to end it.”
“So I think he probably did kill himself. But I suspect that he was helped in the process by some people who might have facilitated his ability to commit suicide because I’ve been in that jail many, many times. It’s not easy to do anything there for him to have been able to bring about his own death, with cameras and with a cellmate would have been impossible. So the cellmate was taken out, and the cameras were off. I suspect there was some improprieties that contributed to his death. That’s just my surmise.“
Dershowitz also discusses alleged Epstein victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre. Dershowitz and Giuffre [Roberts] sued each other for defamation in 2019 when Dershowitz denied allegations that he had sex with Roberts, and called her a liar, according to Insider.
He says he would never settle a case with Roberts, but accused her two lawyers of unethical conduct. “They withdrew the accusation, I settled the case against them.”
“I never expected to spend the last years of my life litigating my reputation,” he added. “I want the people who falsely accuse me to pay a very heavy price for false accusations, because when they falsely accuse somebody, knowingly for money, they destroy the MeToo movement, they destroy the credibility of people who are real victims.”