Yesterday a judge refused to dismiss a defamation lawsuit brought by Virginia Roberts Giuffre against attorney Alan Dershowitz. Giuffre has repeatedly claimed that she had sex with Dershowitz at the behest of Jeffrey Epstein. Dershowitz has denied those claims and called Giuffre a “serial perjurer” and a “serial prostitute.” But Dershowitz asked that the defamation suit be dismissed on the grounds that he was merely repeating statements he’d made earlier:

Dershowitz tried to claim that his 2018 and 2019 statements were just repetitions of the same comments he’d made in 2015, meaning the statute of limitations had run out for Giuffre to sue him. But Judge Loretta Preska disagreed. “Surveying the cases shows this ain’t that,” writes the judge, noting that Dershowitz’s multiple statements over the years back up his self-proclaimed “appreciation of chutzpah.” “Dershowitz went looking for trouble, and by his own repeated affirmative republications, he found it,” Preska wrote.

Here’s a video from April of this year in which Dershowitz goes on the attack against Giuffre. His description of her as a prostitute does make it seem as if he was begging for a lawsuit.

While that refusal to dismiss the case is a loss for Dershowitz, he did succeed in having Roberts’ attorney, David Boies, removed as her attorney:

One of America’s most celebrated lawyers, David Boies, was disqualified Wednesday by a federal judge from representing a woman who accused financier Jeffrey Epstein and his renowned former defense attorney, Alan Dershowitz, of having sex with her when she was an underage girl. U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska in New York not only tossed Boies but also his entire law firm, Boies Schiller Flexner, concluding they have become witnesses in the woman’s defamation case against Dershowitz and can no longer be her advocate… The extraordinary turn of events in Giuffre’s civil case — based partly on evidence of a secret recording taken by Dershowitz of his legal nemesis, Boies — means she might have to hire another law firm to represent her. Boies has cut a prominent figure as a lawyer in the U.S. government’s anti-trust case against Microsoft, for Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election recount, and for movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, who was accused of sexually assaulting numerous Hollywood actresses.

Giuffre has also claimed she was asked by Epstein to have sex with Prince Andrew on several occasions. Prince Andrew also denies the allegations and, like Dershowitz, claims that despite his friendship with Epstein, he had no knowledge of Epstein’s behavior toward young girls. I find that a bit hard to believe though as Epstein’s former lawyer Dershowitz may have had a good reason for not telling the truth about that.

Here’s a CBS report from July in which Dershowitz again proclaims his innocence. His defense of the illegal sweetheart deal he helped negotiate for Epstein as a “not a bad deal” seems pretty laughable at this point and makes the rest of what he’s saying harder to take seriously.