Lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who represented billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein in a 2008 plea agreement in which Epstein was given just 13 months in prison, has defended the agreement, saying that the job of a defense attorney is to get the best deal possible.
In a CBS interview that aired Wednesday, Dershowitz said that although he did not know the extent of the allegations against Epstein, he would defend his client the same way all over again.
{mosads}”I would try to get a better deal. The job of a criminal defense attorney is to try to get the best possible deal,” Dershowitz, who has been a contributor to The Hill, said.
Epstein avoided significant prison time under the 2008 agreement, pleading guilty to two prostitution charges and serving just over one year in jail while having work-release privileges.
That deal came under intense scrutiny this week after Epstein was arrested and charged with sex trafficking, with police saying they found a large number of photos of young girls in Epstein’s possession.
Epstein has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Dershowitz said he was “shocked” by the allegations against Epstein and had never seen him with underage girls.
“No. Oh, no. If I had ever seen Jeffrey Epstein in any inappropriate situation with an underage girl, I would’ve terminated my relationship and turned him in. No way,” Dershowitz said. “We were shocked by the allegations, but as a criminal lawyer, being shocked by an allegation doesn’t mean that I won’t defend somebody.”
Dershowitz also said in the interview that the 2008 deal was good for the prosecution, which he claimed lacked evidence against Epstein, although one detective told the Miami Herald that the evidence against the billionaire was overwhelming.
“They made a deal, and for them it was not a bad deal,” Dershowitz said. “They got him to be a registered sex offender, to pay vast amounts of money to all the women and to get him to plead and go to jail and expose him for the world to see as a sex offender. I think the feds thought it was the best they could do.”
The allegations against Epstein resurfaced after they were detailed in a November Miami Herald report.
That report and the recent charges against Epstein has drawn a number of Democratic lawmakers to call for the resignation of Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, who as U.S. attorney brokered the plea deal with Epstein and his lawyers.