Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax on Monday that The Wall Street Journal contacted him regarding a letter he allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein as part of a package of letters gathered to celebrate the convicted sex offender's 50th birthday in 2003.
The Journal alleged Thursday that President Donald Trump provided a salacious letter as part of the package gathered for Epstein's birthday by socialite Ghislaine Maxwell from various Epstein associates. Trump denied having written such a letter, yet the Journal published the story, prompting Trump to file a $10 billion defamation lawsuit.
Dershowitz told "The Record With Greta Van Susteren" that he cannot remember whether he provided something to the birthday package. He said the Journal refused to show him a copy so he could verify the signature was his.
The Journal reported that his letter included a mock-up of a Vanity Fair magazine cover with facetious headlines such as "Who was Jack the Ripper? Was it Jeffrey Epstein?"
"Well, I'll probably be a witness in the case if it goes to trial because they also called me before publishing the article, and they said, 'you were one of Epstein's friends' — I had been his lawyer at the time, and an academic colleague of his, who also sent a letter that took off after Vanity Fair, calling it Vanity Unfair," Dershowitz said.
"Taking the cover of Vanity Fair, changing some names on it to Jeffrey Epstein. And they said, do you remember that? I said, I have no recollection. Send me the letter that you claim I wrote.
"I said, 'Do you have a letter?' And they said, 'Yes.' Does it have my signature? They said, 'Yes.' I said, send me the signature, and I'll tell you immediately if it's my signature, I would recognize it. And they said, 'We can't do that. We've corroborated the story with others.'
"And so, I said to them, 'if you've corroborated the story with others, why can't you corroborate it with me?' And they said: 'We can't. Maybe someday in the future we'll be able to.'
"Well, so, I may have to be a witness at trial on the issue of malice. That is, whether or not they engaged in reckless disregard, whether or not their processes were such as to pass the test of malice that the Supreme Court set out."
Pages from the leather-bound album were assembled before Epstein was arrested in 2006 and among the documents examined by Department of Justice officials who investigated Epstein and Maxwell years ago, the Journal reported, citing people who have reviewed the pages.
Dershowitz said the Journal made him think that if they gave him a copy of the letter, it would reveal a source, but he said, "I don't care about the source."
"All they have to do is send me a picture of my signature," Dershowitz said. "And, you know, I suspect probably I did. I mean, I've, I have sent funny letters to people for their birthday. That's something that's done.
"None of us knew at this point that Epstein was doing anything wrong. It was years before he was arrested, so I'm not embarrassed about having sent him a birthday letter, but I just don't know if I did or not. And I'd like to know.
"My wife says she doesn't think I did because I don't do things like that, in terms of the cover of a magazine and using that as a way of saying something else. She just said, it doesn't sound familiar. It doesn't sound familiar to me either, but I'm not going to deny it. I want to see the evidence."
Newsmax has reached out to Dow Jones & Company, Inc., the Journal's publisher, for comment.
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Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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