Jeffrey Epstein’s ex-lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, has blamed late Queen Elizabeth II for pressuring Prince Andrew to settle a civil sexual assault case with Virginia Giuffre. He called it a “terrible mistake”.
Prince Andrew reached an out-of-court settlement in February 2022, avoiding having to testify in a US civil court. However, Dershowitz claims the royal would have “won” the court case and was “pressured by his mother” to make the “terrible mistake” of not going to court.
Virginia Giuffre accused Prince Andrew of having sex with her three times after she claimed she was forced into it by notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his second-in-command, Ghislaine Maxwell. In August 2021, Giuffre sued Andrew in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in a civil case, accusing him of “sexual assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress”.
Prince Andrew has strenuously denied any wrongdoing, including in his 2022 settlement with Ms Giuffre.
Dershowitz claims Prince Andrew should have fought the case. “If he had fought that case, I believe he would have won, I believe the case would have been dismissed on a variety of grounds, but he didn’t want to sit through a deposition, or people around him didn’t want to sit through a deposition, so he settled the case,” he said.
“Often you settle cases, not because you’re guilty of what you’re charged, but because you don’t want to admit other things that you’ve done,” the lawyer told Times Radio Tuesday.
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