The Megyn Kelly Show - Alan Dershowitz on SCOTUS, Epstein, and OJ

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00:01:01.280 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:01:03.280 Your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:01:06.800 Hey, everyone. I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:01:16.080 Today, Alan Dershowitz, American attorney, a legal scholar.

00:01:21.600 The guy was really the most respected professor at Harvard Law School for 50 years.

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00:02:59.160 And now, Alan Dershowitz.

00:03:02.940 Professor Alan Dershowitz, so great to have you here.

00:03:05.920 What a pleasure to be on with you.

00:03:07.580 I've been a longtime admirer of your great work.

00:03:10.060 So thanks for having me.

00:03:11.280 Thank you.

00:03:11.780 Well, it's funny because I was in law school from 1992 to 1995.

00:03:16.820 And not long before that, you had tried, well, handled the appeal for Klaus von Bülow, which wound up becoming a movie, Reversal of Fortune.

00:03:26.300 And I always admired you.

00:03:28.060 And the O.J. thing was going on at the time.

00:03:30.240 So for me, it's like a little bit of being starstruck when I talk to it.

00:03:34.620 When I meet a Supreme Court justice, when I meet a lawyer like you or Bob Shapiro, I just it takes me back to having stars in my eyes about the law, which were good days.

00:03:43.400 Well, it makes me starstruck to talk to you because my alternate career was going to be as a journalist.

00:03:49.940 I never was smart enough to be a journalist, so I had to become a lawyer.

00:03:53.200 But you've been one of my heroes.

00:03:55.660 Thank you.

00:03:56.580 All right.

00:03:56.760 So let's talk, first of all, what's in the news this week, which is the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett.

00:04:01.680 And, you know, what I've seen so far is the Democrats are, you know, being very good about staying on message, Obamacare, Obamacare.

00:04:11.440 They're not going after her religion, although some of their surrogates outside the Senate confirmation hearing room are.

00:04:19.820 But in that hearing room, it's a very disciplined message of don't screw anything up for Joe Biden, who is winning this race.

00:04:27.480 Your thoughts on what we've seen so far?

00:04:28.960 I think we're seeing a group of inept senators who don't know how to ask a question on cross-examination and who aren't serving the interests of the American public.

00:04:39.380 Look, this is a woman who's highly qualified.

00:04:41.720 She's brilliant.

00:04:42.860 She will be the next Justice Scalia, and she will serve for probably 40 years on the United States Supreme Court.

00:04:50.220 And we, the public, are entitled to know what we're getting.

00:04:53.780 And these senators just don't know how to ask a question or a follow-up question.

00:04:57.600 Mostly, their statements are written by their staff.

00:05:00.680 They anticipate the answers, and then they just move on.

00:05:03.780 So we're not learning a lot.

00:05:05.400 You're right.

00:05:06.420 I think they learned the lesson of Senator Feinstein when she made a fool of herself in the previous confirmation hearing of Judge Barrett for the Seventh Circuit when she said,

00:05:16.520 the dogma lives loudly within you, and that's a great concern to us.

00:05:20.380 That was an attack on her Catholic faith, and it was not proper under the Constitution, which says that no religious test shall ever be required.

00:05:28.440 So, as usual, in America, the pendulum swings very widely as the result of that backfiring.

00:05:33.960 In fact, Judge Barrett is probably sitting in the seat she's sitting in largely because of Dianne Feinstein, who made her into a hero.

00:05:42.780 T-shirts were made out of the dogma lives loudly within you.

00:05:47.060 And as a result of that backfiring, they're now staying completely away from anything that deals with religion, where it's appropriate to ask her about questions of recusal.

00:05:57.120 She wrote a brilliant law review article in, I think, 1998, in which she said that as a deeply religious, observant Catholic, she might have to recuse herself in cases where the law conflicts with the obligation she has to her religion, namely in the areas of capital punishment and abortion.

00:06:16.180 So that's a perfectly appropriate area to ask her about.

00:06:20.140 It deals with religion a little bit, but she opened the door to it.

00:06:23.100 But I think the Democrats are walking. Yeah, the Democrats are walking on eggshells because appropriately, they don't want to in any way demean her faith or the way she brings up her children or how many children she has.

00:06:37.240 All of those are very positive factors. Look, she's highly qualified.

00:06:41.260 There are only two questions. One, should the Republicans have gotten to make this nomination in light of the way they handled the Merrick Garland matter?

00:06:47.640 And two, the issues of recusal based on her religious faith. And I think she'll win on both of those.

00:06:54.140 Well, that's the thing. I think they're not doing it because they're assuming that she's going to be a justice similar to Scalia, her hero and for whom she clerked.

00:07:02.560 And that it's not it's not worth it to cost themselves the political points in the presidential race for the Republicans to be able to make an ad that makes it even sound like they're going after religion.

00:07:13.480 Because while it might be interesting to hear her answers to those questions, they know this is a done deal.

00:07:18.460 This is done. She's going to get confirmed, barring some massive gaffe on her part over the next week.

00:07:23.340 So I think it's all a political calculation. And I think both sides are playing it right.

00:07:27.140 The Democrats are not trying to make too many waves and the Republicans are speeding it along as fast as humanly possible.

00:07:34.000 Let me just ask you about Roe, though, because they are, as they always do in these hearings, trying to get the would be justice to say how they would rule on Roe.

00:07:41.980 And they always dodge. No one's ever going to answer that.

00:07:45.060 But let me just play Dianne Feinstein's attempt and Judge Barrett's answer.

00:07:48.760 A major cause with major effect on over half of the population of this country who are women, after all, it's it's distressing not to get a straight answer.

00:08:01.520 So let me try again. Do you agree with Justice Scalia's view that Roe was wrongly decided?

00:08:10.420 Senator, I completely understand why you are asking the question.

00:08:15.300 But again, I can't pre-commit or say, yes, I'm going in with some agenda because I'm not.

00:08:23.260 I don't have any agenda. I have no agenda to try to overrule Casey.

00:08:27.820 I have an agenda to stick to the rule of law and decide cases as they come.

00:08:33.000 And they're not going to do much better than that, I think.

00:08:35.160 But do you think, assume she gets on, do you think that the conservatives have the votes to overturn Roe and the case that upheld it in large part Casey, which was decided in 1992?

00:08:48.260 I have no doubt that if Roe came to the current court, it would not be decided the way it was in 1973.

00:08:54.440 That's easy.

00:08:55.200 And she would vote against it, as would probably even Chief Justice John Roberts vote against it.

00:09:01.980 That's not the issue now.

00:09:03.040 The issue is whether you overrule a nearly 50-year-old precedent, reaffirmed over and over again, cut away, but really reaffirmed.

00:09:13.740 And of course, she thinks Roe versus Wade was wrongly decided.

00:09:18.000 I'm sure she's told that to her friends in private conversation and probably to her students.

00:09:22.740 But the question is, what role does precedent play?

00:09:26.720 Now, Justice Scalia made it very clear.

00:09:28.500 He said, I do not take an oath to my fellow justices to follow their precedent.

00:09:32.840 I take an oath to the Constitution.

00:09:34.820 I suspect that she will not overtly overrule Roe versus Wade, but she would take every opportunity to cut back at it and to limit its application.

00:09:44.940 Right.

00:09:45.060 If I had to predict the Supreme Court's future on the issue of abortion, I would say it's going to be more approvals of limitations around the edges, you know, more parental notification laws, shorter upholding state laws that may shorten the amount of time that it's legal and so on.

00:10:04.120 But I don't know if I don't think just looking at this court now, assuming she gets on, they've got five votes to overturn Roe because I don't think Roberts will be on that train.

00:10:13.080 I think you've got Alito.

00:10:14.020 You've got Thomas.

00:10:14.860 I believe you would have Amy Coney Barrett.

00:10:16.820 And the question would be about Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.

00:10:19.420 There's just not enough evidence, I think, in the case of those two guys.

00:10:21.940 So time will tell.

00:10:23.560 And even if and as you say, even if they're personally anti-abortion, that doesn't mean that they're going to vote to to strike down pro-abortion laws or strike down Roe.

00:10:34.280 We saw that with Justice Kennedy.

00:10:36.840 He he's he was anti-abortion, but he voted to uphold Roe.

00:10:40.540 OK, so moving on to justice.

00:10:42.680 Justice Thomas is now one of the older justices on the Supreme Court.

00:10:47.480 We don't know how long he'll stay on the court.

00:10:49.500 And he might be very well replaced by a more liberal Democrat if the election moves in the direction that it looks like it's moving.

00:10:58.820 I if I predict if if Biden wins, Thomas will do everything in his power not to not to get sick and not to leave the high court during that during that tenure.

00:11:09.160 So on the subject of Supreme Court for weeks now, everyone, the media, Republicans, I guess everyone but Democrats have been trying to get Joe Biden to say whether he's in favor of, quote, packing the court if he's elected because the Dems are mad.

00:11:25.680 Amy Coney Barrett's going to get on, even though the Republicans wouldn't give Merrick Garland a hearing in the last year of Obama's term.

00:11:32.480 And the payback they're talking about is adding, adding, getting rid of the filibuster in the U.S. Senate and then adding a couple of justices to the U.S. Supreme Court.

00:11:41.840 So it leans more left, which is extremely controversial.

00:11:45.500 It's it's basically it's I think it's wrecking the top court of the third branch of government.

00:11:50.740 No one will have faith in the opinions.

00:11:52.040 No one will respect it.

00:11:52.900 And I don't think people will listen to it.

00:11:54.240 So it's controversial, but just to tee it up for you, Joe Biden actually spoke to it yesterday for the first time in a passing manner.

00:12:02.540 A local reporter at WKRC, Kyle Inskeep, that's out in Cincinnati in Ohio, took a shot at trying to get him to answer the question.

00:12:10.380 And here's what he said.

00:12:11.300 The packing court packing is going on now.

00:12:13.480 Never before, when an election has already begun and millions of votes are already cast, has it ever been that a Supreme Court nominee was put forward?

00:12:23.960 Had never happened before.

00:12:25.620 I've already spoken on.

00:12:27.160 I'm not a fan of court packing, but I'm not.

00:12:29.840 I don't want to get off on that whole issue.

00:12:32.660 I'm not a fan of court packing, which is the most he said about it crazily because he hasn't really been pinned down.

00:12:39.240 But he's you tell me whether that is sufficient on this issue.

00:12:43.480 Well, it's not sufficient for those of us who would be strongly opposed to court packing, but it's the best we're going to get.

00:12:48.960 Look, he's winning the election.

00:12:50.740 There's no reason for him to put his foot in his mouth and to lose the support of the squad and their backers by saying what he really believes.

00:12:59.700 And that is, I think he's opposed to court packing, but he doesn't want to lose the hard left.

00:13:06.700 If he were to come out in favor of court packing, he may lose some centrists.

00:13:10.060 So it's the smart thing for him to do to avoid answering the question.

00:13:15.340 I don't think it's the right thing.

00:13:16.660 I think a person running for president has an obligation to tell the public what his or her views are on important and controversial subjects, and court packing is one of them.

00:13:26.920 But I'm comfortable that he would not be in favor of court packing.

00:13:31.360 Would he actually veto a law that expanded the number of justices to 11?

00:13:37.520 I don't know the answer to that question.

00:13:39.060 I suspect he might very well veto such a law.

00:13:42.520 I know, because if you look at Biden's history, I mean, he was chair of the Senate Judicial Committee, and he knows how it works and he knows how important that body is.

00:13:53.780 And it is hard to believe that a guy who's been that moderate, really, for a lot of his history would do something so radical.

00:14:02.060 It would be hugely radical.

00:14:03.440 And right now, you know, FDR tried to do this and his own party said, no, hell no.

00:14:08.280 And the support for court packing right now, according to the polls, is 20 percent lower than it was when FDR tried it.

00:14:15.900 So it really would be reckless.

00:14:18.480 But let's move on.

00:14:19.840 It would be reckless, but there are Democrats that are reckless and they're angry.

00:14:22.720 And I don't blame them for being angry.

00:14:24.140 They were deprived of a seat that should have gone, obviously, to Merrick Garland and that the Republicans behaved improperly in that regard.

00:14:32.780 And I understand the anger of the Democrats, but they shouldn't take it out on the Supreme Court as an institution.

00:14:38.440 Yeah, I know their explanation now as well.

00:14:41.360 We didn't give him a hearing because it was Republicans who controlled the Senate at that point.

00:14:45.900 We had a Democratic president.

00:14:46.980 And under those circumstances, you should let the people decide, unlike this time.

00:14:51.160 But I agree with you.

00:14:52.140 I agree with you that they should have given Merrick Garland a hearing.

00:14:56.420 Maybe they would have voted him down, but the guy deserved a hearing.

00:14:59.320 And, you know, they're all hypocritical.

00:15:01.560 Well, both sides have a lot of explaining on justices and judges to do.

00:15:07.100 Coming up with the professor.

00:15:08.900 What has life been like for him since he defended Trump at his impeachment trial?

00:15:14.060 What's happening on our college campuses right now with snowflakes everywhere?

00:15:18.940 And what does he think of cancel culture and how we stop it?

00:15:22.680 That's in a minute.

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00:16:42.800 And now, back to Alan.

00:16:45.420 You made your name as a professor at Harvard Law School.

00:16:50.460 But meanwhile, had an incredible legal career as a practicing attorney as well.

00:16:55.620 And correct me if I'm wrong, but for most of your career, you were a Democrat.

00:17:00.640 I've never voted Republican for a presidential candidate since I voted for John F. Kennedy in 1960.

00:17:07.280 I voted once for a Republican, for governor, Bill Weld.

00:17:10.900 But I have been a loyal, straight, down-the-line Democrat from the day I could vote when I was 21.

00:17:16.540 Couldn't vote when I was 18.

00:17:17.680 And on top of that have taken many, many cases pro bono, meaning for free, representing minorities who had been convicted, trying to keep them off of death row and so on.

00:17:29.640 You've devoted a lot of your career to doing things that most humans would support, but certainly most Democrats, most liberals would support.

00:17:37.540 Okay, so the problem, as I see it, for you and the left, because there's been a problem, they've turned on you in my view, is you had the temerity to defend some of Trump's positions.

00:17:51.320 In particular, you defended him on, quote, Russiagate, which we now know had no basis.

00:17:56.120 But even before that, I thought you were fair.

00:17:58.840 You were fair to him.

00:17:59.920 You weren't in the tank for him, but you wouldn't have a knee-jerk reaction against him.

00:18:03.940 And to me, that was the beginning of the end for you and the left.

00:18:07.060 What do you think?

00:18:08.380 Oh, no, you're 100 percent right.

00:18:09.620 Look, the only other times I've ever been involved in political cases, I represented Alan Cranston, the liberal senator from California, on the floor of the United States Senate.

00:18:18.500 And I was part of the legal team for Bill Clinton when he was impeached.

00:18:22.400 And I would have been part of the legal team for Hillary Clinton had she been elected and had the Republicans impeached her.

00:18:27.960 But I put the Constitution above politics.

00:18:30.300 And so for me, bipartisanism means that you support positions of the person you voted against when they're right, and you oppose positions of the person you voted for when they're wrong.

00:18:41.160 And I've taken that view all my life.

00:18:43.380 But when it came to Trump, it was like Red Sox-Yankees.

00:18:46.640 You had to pick sides.

00:18:47.940 You couldn't be, well, I'll tell you, I really liked the way so-and-so pitched and the way so-and-so fielded.

00:18:54.920 No, you've got to pick the Yankees or the Red Sox.

00:18:56.940 If you're in any way in support of any position that President Trump took, you're a renegade and you're a traitor.

00:19:03.860 And it ended many of my friendships and relationships that have been long-term.

00:19:08.620 Give you an example of one famous celebrity.

00:19:10.700 I'm not going to mention his name.

00:19:11.780 But his daughter couldn't get into college.

00:19:14.580 And so he pleaded with me to try to help his daughter get into college.

00:19:18.460 And I called a friend of mine who was the president of the university.

00:19:20.800 And I got her an interview.

00:19:23.280 And I got the president to use one of his slots to admit her to the college of her choice.

00:19:30.140 And she went to the college of her choice.

00:19:31.820 And she was really thrilled.

00:19:33.880 And her father was really thrilled.

00:19:36.460 And he no longer talks to me because he thinks that I now am a Trump supporter.

00:19:41.460 Of course, I'm not a Trump supporter.

00:19:42.740 I'm a supporter of the Constitution.

00:19:44.620 And when the Constitution is on the side of President Trump, as it was for the impeachment, I'm going to be on the side of the Constitution.

00:19:51.080 But there are many instances like this where I've woken up at 3 o'clock in the morning and bailed a kid out of prison for drunken driving.

00:19:59.680 And now the family isn't talking to me or associating with me.

00:20:05.120 And they regard me as a pariah.

00:20:07.120 That's the country we live in today, unfortunately.

00:20:09.600 You know, I used to have debates with Bill Buckley on television.

00:20:13.360 We disagreed about everything.

00:20:14.840 And then we went out and had a drink.

00:20:15.960 And we're friends.

00:20:16.780 Exactly.

00:20:17.380 Just as for you.

00:20:18.000 It's like Reagan and Tip O'Neill in the 6 o'clock rule where they'd fight like hell during the day.

00:20:22.320 But at 6 o'clock, they'd go have a beer.

00:20:24.140 And we've completely lost that.

00:20:25.980 I mean, I'll tell you sort of a similar but kind of the reverse story in my own life.

00:20:30.700 My mother threw a small dinner party for me and my husband when we came home to visit her up in Albany one time.

00:20:36.320 This is, I don't know, years ago, maybe five or six years ago.

00:20:38.320 And she had a bunch of friends of hers.

00:20:40.920 And they were all very cordial.

00:20:42.680 We're in my mom's house.

00:20:44.280 And one of them came up to me and said, this is while I was at Fox, how do you sleep at night, you know, working for that organization?

00:20:51.980 And I said something to the effect of, just fine.

00:20:55.120 The check's cash.

00:20:56.960 And I think we're providing the nation a service.

00:20:59.080 And it all worked out in the end.

00:21:00.580 You know, she was like stunned.

00:21:02.560 She hated Fox.

00:21:03.480 She thought I was doing the devil's work there.

00:21:05.440 And then a couple of years later, would you believe they called?

00:21:09.800 They wanted me to help their son get an internship at Fox.

00:21:13.740 Of course.

00:21:14.900 Of course.

00:21:15.660 Of course.

00:21:16.040 You've got to be kidding.

00:21:16.640 I had a woman who walked out of a cocktail party.

00:21:20.040 She said she saw me at the cocktail party.

00:21:22.960 And if she saw a knife on the table, she would have picked it up and stabbed me in the heart.

00:21:29.020 So in order to avoid a murder charge, she had to leave the party so as not to confront me.

00:21:34.620 This is also a woman who I helped in a number of ways.

00:21:38.060 Was there one moment?

00:21:39.000 Do you feel like it was because it definitely preceded your representing Trump and defending him during the impeachment?

00:21:44.500 I feel like they turned prior to that.

00:21:46.400 So was there one moment?

00:21:49.320 Yeah, I think the moment was when I said that although I disapprove of the Muslim ban, as it was called, I believe it was probably constitutional and the court would uphold it.

00:22:01.880 I think that may have been the turning point.

00:22:04.300 Of course, I turned out to be right on every single prediction I made about how the courts would decide all of these cases involving what President Trump was doing.

00:22:14.200 I disagreed with most of his policies, but I found them not to be unconstitutional.

00:22:20.260 And because I didn't pull a Larry Tribe, you know, my friend and colleague Larry Tribe, the Constitution always comes out consistent with his political views.

00:22:27.880 In my case, it doesn't always come out consistent with my political views, and I always support the Constitution.

00:22:34.700 I agree with you.

00:22:35.260 When you look at some of these police-involved shootings, I feel like I run into this all the time because people just want to condemn the police, a knee-jerk reaction of condemning the police.

00:22:44.960 And I always, as a lawyer, think, well, let's just wait and see what the evidence is.

00:22:48.280 Let's find out what the evidence is.

00:22:49.100 Oh, sure.

00:22:49.340 The Breonna Taylor case is a perfect example.

00:22:52.000 The prosecutor got it right in that case, not prosecuting the policeman who shot her and killed her for murder.

00:23:01.200 He was responding to a shot fired at him that almost killed his colleague.

00:23:06.160 Do I think it requires better police training?

00:23:08.140 Yes.

00:23:08.820 Should he have fired?

00:23:09.780 Maybe not.

00:23:10.560 But it wasn't murder.

00:23:11.620 I've been teaching criminal law 50 years.

00:23:13.400 I know what murder is.

00:23:15.520 And they didn't get it right.

00:23:17.460 And the protesters didn't get it right on that one, saying that he should be prosecuted for murder.

00:23:23.280 Oh, yeah, but then you have all these celebrities coming out saying how ashamed they are of the DA down there, the AG, who is a black man, you know, accusing him of being an Uncle Tom, of being, it was like skin folk, but not kin folk.

00:23:36.720 That guy, I mean, he took so much incoming just because he followed the law.

00:23:42.360 And you may not like it, but that's his job.

00:23:45.120 So let me ask you about what's happening in universities.

00:23:47.320 You're now emeritus at Harvard, right?

00:23:50.720 You're not you're not actively teaching there.

00:23:52.960 So and this is an institution that you've done a lot for over the years.

00:23:56.680 I mean, half the people have heard about Harvard Law through the cases you've taken on because they mentioned Harvard Law's Ellen Dershowitz.

00:24:02.880 What's happening on university campuses right now is scaring me.

00:24:06.240 And it's been scaring me for a while, but it's getting worse than ever.

00:24:09.360 However, the ideological intolerance, the absolute refusal to to to allow any view other than a far left view, not just in the students who are on campus and forget the professors, but to the those applying to the school.

00:24:25.620 There was there was there was just a study that came out at Harvard that said only seven percent of the incoming students are conservative, only seven.

00:24:34.880 So that means one of two things, because, you know, it's about 50 50 in the country.

00:24:37.820 Either a lot of students are lying and covering up whatever clubs they were part of in their applications to Harvard, or this is true.

00:24:48.340 Only seven percent are being admitted.

00:24:50.160 And that's by design by by Harvard, because it simply doesn't want them.

00:24:54.760 The last thing Harvard wants is intellectual diversity.

00:24:59.520 What it wants is superficial diversity.

00:25:02.080 People look different, but they want them to think the same.

00:25:06.820 And it's a it's a great challenge.

00:25:10.700 And I do think universities today feel it's their obligation to teach the students what to think.

00:25:16.820 In 50 years at Harvard, I never told the student what to think.

00:25:19.540 I tried to teach them how to think.

00:25:21.200 I always played the devil's advocate in class.

00:25:23.480 I always took positions different from what the majority view in the classroom was, because the job of the lawyer is to be able to argue all sides of an issue.

00:25:32.120 And I wanted to make sure the students were adept at thinking through different kinds of considerations.

00:25:38.560 But, you know, the idea, the way that the university treated Ron Sullivan, my friend and colleague, who's a great lawyer and was the dean of one of the houses and a very popular dean.

00:25:49.300 But he made, quote, the mistake of joining the legal team for Harvey Weinstein for a brief period of time.

00:25:56.260 And the snowflakes in his house said they were afraid of him.

00:26:00.620 They were afraid of him.

00:26:01.400 This is the nicest guy in the world.

00:26:02.940 He and his wife, they felt unsafe, which, by the way, in any other circle would have led to charges of racism because he and his wife are the first black faculty deans in Harvard's history.

00:26:11.160 So if you say the black man's making you feel unsafe in any other context, you're a racist.

00:26:15.420 But here, because he had the temerity to represent an accused criminal, even one as abhorrent as Harvey Weinstein, made him awful.

00:26:22.560 But also an accused white criminal.

00:26:25.020 Remember, he had previously represented a football player on the New England Patriots who had been convicted of murdering two people, murdering two people.

00:26:34.620 And the same students didn't feel unsafe in the presence of a lawyer who had represented somebody who had murdered two people.

00:26:41.940 But when he represented Harvey Weinstein, that made them feel unsafe.

00:26:46.980 First of all, it's a lie.

00:26:48.140 The students didn't feel unsafe.

00:26:49.300 They just know that's a formulaic way of imposing censorship today in universities.

00:26:55.380 If you say you feel unsafe, that gives you the right to censor opposing points of view.

00:27:00.680 Nobody has the right to have ideas safe on a university campus.

00:27:05.140 I would start my classes.

00:27:06.400 I teach a freshman seminar, 15 brilliant students, 18 years old, just coming in.

00:27:11.400 And I would say, you know, if you want to be comfortable, you know, go do something that makes you comfortable.

00:27:17.500 But in this class, every idea you've ever had is going to be challenged.

00:27:21.940 You're going to be challenging what your parents taught you, what your rabbi, what your priest, what your minister taught you, what your friends taught you.

00:27:29.340 Every idea is going to be challenging.

00:27:31.120 If that makes you uncomfortable, you know, take a different course.

00:27:34.180 But that's what universities are for, to make you uncomfortable about your ideas and the idea that you can feel unsafe because somebody has a different view from you is so antagonistic to what a university should be doing.

00:27:49.340 Mm hmm. And to what should be happening in the United States of America.

00:27:53.180 We used to pride ourselves on being able to answer speech you do not like with not less speech, but more speech.

00:27:59.420 That's the bedrock of the First Amendment.

00:28:01.260 And we've gotten I realize it's not state action when a university tries to create a safe space and shut one side up.

00:28:07.600 But just the principle underlying the First Amendment and free speech has been completely smothered.

00:28:11.900 I agree. I have a new book coming out in a couple of months called Cancel Culture, the newest attack on free speech and due process, in which I go through what's going on at universities and how terrified particularly young assistant professors are to express views even outside the classroom that are regarded as politically incorrect.

00:28:30.500 They just won't get tenure. And so you're getting a homogenous view on many university campuses and the students aren't being educated.

00:28:37.240 They're being propagandized.

00:28:38.760 So what's the answer to that? I think about it from a personal standpoint, because my oldest is 11 and in fifth grade, and I do not want to send him to one of these colleges.

00:28:48.520 I don't want some college that's Doug and I are not particularly ideological, but I really don't want someone trying to indoctrinate into him into far left liberal ideology, victimhood, all that comes with this crazy, woke, scold identity theory.

00:29:04.660 So what would you do if you were me? A, do you think we can solve it before, you know, in the next seven years?

00:29:10.260 And B, is there a university out there that that is still the way they used to be a little bit maybe left leaning, but a little bit less interfering?

00:29:19.200 Well, I do think there are some universities in which at least the view is expressed that all ideas are welcome.

00:29:28.160 University of Chicago was among the leaders in that regard until very recently when the English department said it's now the philosophy of the English department to support Black Lives Matter and to only admit students this coming year who are supportive of Black values and Black Lives Matter.

00:29:47.920 Black studies, yeah. They have to have a focus in Black studies.

00:29:51.260 Yeah, but that's not the way universities should operate. The Harvard Business School just had a statement not so different from that.

00:29:58.460 But, you know, the way to deal with this is to make sure your children are prepared to fight for their values and, you know, let them go into the belly of the beast.

00:30:07.700 Let them go to the best college or university they can get into, but let them be prepared.

00:30:11.280 There are always going to be clubs and groups that are fighting political correctness on the college campus.

00:30:18.320 And as long as your children know that there are opportunities to respond.

00:30:24.400 And remember, too, universities are not just the current faculty and student body.

00:30:28.120 They are the alumni.

00:30:29.620 If they're state universities, they are governed often by the First Amendment and state law.

00:30:34.340 So there are ways of fighting back.

00:30:37.160 I wouldn't give up. I think your your your son or daughter should try to get into the best college they can get into, the one that most suits them.

00:30:45.560 Not necessarily the one that's ranked highest by U.S. News and World Report, but the one that best suits their personality, their skills, their approach to learning.

00:30:54.780 And then, you know, fight for their freedoms.

00:30:57.560 That's probably a good part of their education.

00:31:00.480 Well, and to your point, I mean, one of the things I've been saying is that people who are not buying into this safe space nonsense and want the free and full exchange of ideas and arguments and discussions and happen to be on the right half of the country, happen to be more conservative or center, center right, even center left.

00:31:18.680 Need to fight you. You it's not enough anymore to sit back and just read the newspaper about it.

00:31:24.560 You have to take a stand, engage in this kind of discussion, stand up for principles of of exchange, just exchange right now.

00:31:32.620 It's just shut up. There's there'll be no exchange.

00:31:34.240 No, you're going to pay a price. No, you're going to pay a price.

00:31:38.500 You know, I have always fought for my principles.

00:31:40.880 I've always fought back. I've never remained silent.

00:31:43.940 And I've paid a heavy price for that.

00:31:47.040 Fortunately, I have a thick skin, but it's taken a toll on my family.

00:31:51.200 You know, my wife had somebody walk out of the gym saying, oh, that's Alan Dershowitz's wife.

00:31:55.960 We can't be in the same gym she's in.

00:31:59.140 I mean, it's gotten to that extreme where my wife, who doesn't agree with me on some of my views or my children and grandchildren who don't agree with me, have to pay a price for my speaking out about these issues.

00:32:11.740 I can take it. But the idea that my grandchildren are discriminated against or my children or my wife because of my views, that's new to America.

00:32:21.180 That reminds me of what was going on in some European countries in bed all days.

00:32:26.020 Absolutely. But I think the only way forward is to do more of that.

00:32:30.000 And for people like you, people like me to take it, take it.

00:32:33.760 You know, those who've already developed a thick skin because we've been in the arena.

00:32:36.580 You're you're you're, I think, center right. I'm center left.

00:32:40.740 But we can talk to each other. We have in common a love of the First Amendment, of freedom of speech, of due process.

00:32:47.740 You know, I'll win some. You'll win some when it comes to ideological or political issues.

00:32:53.080 But that's what democracy is about.

00:32:55.240 Yeah, we'll learn that the Harvard professor who Ron Sullivan, who you mentioned,

00:33:01.020 who's now no longer a faculty dean because he represented Harvey for a short time.

00:33:05.840 That case really concerned me. And as a lawyer, I looked at that and said, does anyone understand what defense lawyers do?

00:33:13.960 Like it reminded me of when I got blowback for interviewing Alex Jones.

00:33:17.900 It was like we don't only get to interview the good guys and criminal defense lawyers by nature.

00:33:24.620 Nine times out of 10, you tell me, are representing someone who is guilty.

00:33:28.940 I feel like the whole notion has been spun on its head.

00:33:32.620 Thank God for that. We want to live in a country where the majority of people who are charged with crime are innocent.

00:33:37.960 That's Iran. That's China. That's not America.

00:33:41.240 We live in a country where the vast majority of people charged with crime are guilty.

00:33:44.440 And we want to keep it that way. And the way to keep it that way is to make sure you vigorously and zealously defend everybody who's charged with crime.

00:33:52.820 That's the key to being an effective defense lawyer.

00:33:56.860 And that's what's required of us under the Constitution.

00:34:00.140 But people just don't understand it.

00:34:02.940 They say if you've defended somebody who's bad, you must be bad.

00:34:05.840 The Alaska Bar Association invited me to speak this year.

00:34:09.140 And it led to a tremendous amount of complaint by some lawyers saying we don't want Dershowitz.

00:34:15.440 He has defended A, B, C, D.

00:34:17.820 Then they listed all the bad guys I've defended.

00:34:20.580 And that's a reason for not inviting me to speak at a bar association.

00:34:24.880 That's how bad it's become.

00:34:26.220 I'm old enough. You're not.

00:34:27.680 But I'm old enough to remember McCarthyism.

00:34:30.080 I remember McCarthyism because I went to Brooklyn College, which was called the Little Red Schoolhouse.

00:34:35.180 And there was a campaign led by a very interesting professor named Eugene Scalia, Justice Scalia's father, was a professor.

00:34:43.060 And he was leading a campaign to try to rid the English Department of people who had taken the Fifth Amendment and were thought to be Fifth Amendment communists.

00:34:50.880 And as a young student, I was president of the student body, I fought against Professor Scalia.

00:34:56.500 And, you know, I remember McCarthyism so vividly that lawyers who defended people who were accused of being communists were criticized.

00:35:04.500 I was not a lawyer, but as president of the student body, I stood up for the professors.

00:35:09.180 I hated communism.

00:35:10.180 I grew up in a home that just despised Stalin, despised communism.

00:35:14.320 But I stood up for the rights of professors to speak their views.

00:35:18.420 And I was, as a result of that, the president of the college, the academic president of the college, wouldn't recommend me to law school, wouldn't write a recommendation for me to law school, even though I was the number one student in the school and president of the student body and head of the debate team.

00:35:31.600 I got into law school, but by the skin of my teeth, because I stood up for the rights of people who I disagreed with.

00:35:37.840 That doesn't happen anymore.

00:35:41.460 Coming up next with Alan, did O.J. Simpson kill his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman?

00:35:49.100 He's got thoughts.

00:35:50.440 And did Jeffrey Epstein kill himself?

00:35:53.740 Wait until you hear this answer.

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00:37:28.280 And back to Alan in one sec, but first we want to bring you this feature that we call Asked and Answered here on the Megyn Kelly Show.

00:37:34.680 Steve Krakauer is my executive producer, and this is a segment where we answer some viewer questions.

00:37:39.760 Right, Steve?

00:37:40.500 That's right.

00:37:40.920 Yeah, we've gotten a ton of questions.

00:37:42.920 And again, if you want to ask questions, go to questions at devilmaycaremedia.com.

00:37:48.000 Keep them coming.

00:37:48.720 We'll do this on a regular basis.

00:37:50.920 So Megan, this question today is from PL, who wanted to know, he said, was the movie Bombshell accurate?

00:37:56.540 I know you've commented, but would you like to elaborate?

00:37:58.700 Also, what did you think of Charlize's performance?

00:38:01.240 So handing it over to you on Bombshell.

00:38:03.460 You know, you should really have my husband here to respond to that second point, because he's got a lot to say about the Charlize performance.

00:38:09.160 Um, he, he just thought that she played me very, very serious all the time.

00:38:16.580 You know, like I was on the air at cable news, like I'm going to kick everyone's ass everywhere I go.

00:38:22.760 And as most of my viewers and my listeners know, I have a softer side.

00:38:27.700 I'm not all sharp elbows.

00:38:29.200 You know, I can be quite joyous if given the chance.

00:38:32.660 Um, but the movie itself, you know, it was, it was, it was complicated for me.

00:38:40.360 It brought back a very painful time in my history at Fox and one that, that would change my professional life at Fox profoundly.

00:38:49.340 Um, I definitely lost some close friends there and mentors who just have never forgiven me for not backing Ailes.

00:38:56.480 And, uh, you know, I understand because everybody loved him and even I loved him.

00:39:04.340 Uh, and it was just the most complicated situation because I knew that he had harassed me when I was a very young reporter at the, at the company and that we had gotten past it and that he never retaliated against me.

00:39:17.540 I did not know him as a retaliator.

00:39:19.260 Years later, I became best friends with Janice Dean.

00:39:22.480 She also had a story about when she was interviewing for her job right at the same time around when it happened to me.

00:39:27.380 So we just chalked it up to the guy's having a rough go in his marriage, which is what my supervisor had told me, uh, and just, just to move on.

00:39:34.800 And that if I moved on, he would drop it.

00:39:36.940 And that's what happened.

00:39:38.680 So anyway, when it ultimately came up, is he a harasser, which is what Gretchen was alleging.

00:39:44.540 Um, you know, I felt like I had one answer, uh, but I didn't, I didn't know.

00:39:51.780 That's the truth.

00:39:52.920 I didn't know of any other woman besides Janice.

00:39:55.260 And I didn't know what I thought about Gretchen.

00:39:57.800 There was, there was no real love loss between the two of us.

00:40:01.000 I was much closer to Roger than I was to her.

00:40:04.160 Anyway, long and the short of it is they did decide they managed to get the investigation limited to just a small team that worked with Gretchen Carlson.

00:40:13.180 And I knew that that would not include talent, wouldn't include me, wouldn't include Janice.

00:40:17.860 And I didn't know whether he was or he wasn't, but I knew they needed to do a full and fair investigation, that we needed to know the truth one way or the other.

00:40:24.860 And they did.

00:40:25.680 And that's portrayed in the movie accurately.

00:40:28.620 So I objected to some of the caricatures of folks at Fox there, in particular, what they did to Brian Kilmeade, who's a great guy.

00:40:35.460 And they showed some of his body and fun exchanges with Gretchen on the set.

00:40:40.540 I, it was a, Fox and Friends is a playful show.

00:40:43.880 And she was playful, too, with him at times.

00:40:45.960 And they just made him out to be this bore, which he isn't.

00:40:48.600 He's a great, great guy.

00:40:50.620 Things like that bothered me.

00:40:52.000 But, you know, not unexpected with a Hollywood film.

00:40:55.120 They're not big fans of Fox News.

00:40:57.040 Having said all that, I appreciate the attempt to shine a light on a difficult subject.

00:41:01.400 And I've heard enough from young women that it gave them a bit of a roadmap for their own situations.

00:41:09.160 My story, Gretchen's story, Janice's, and the women of Fox News.

00:41:13.220 So I'm glad it got some attention.

00:41:16.240 And now that it's over, I'm happy to move on from both the events and the movie.

00:41:22.820 Thank you for asking.

00:41:24.660 And now, back to Professor Dershowitz.

00:41:27.080 Klaus von Bülow, so people know, this happened, I guess it was, Reversal of Fortune, the movie came out in 1990.

00:41:34.320 But, so it happened in the late, I think that, did she go into a coma in 79?

00:41:39.760 Something like that, 79, 80.

00:41:41.940 So what happened basically was these very rich people who had this amazing mansion in Rhode Island, but not a very healthy marriage.

00:41:48.760 The woman, Sonny von Bülow, went into a coma and survived.

00:41:54.220 And then two years later, she's a young woman, healthy.

00:41:56.280 Two years later, went into another coma that appeared to be insulin-induced, an overdose of insulin.

00:42:01.140 That's how it appeared.

00:42:02.520 And never recovered.

00:42:03.880 She stayed in a coma.

00:42:05.000 And her husband, Klaus, was charged with her murder.

00:42:07.920 And he was convicted.

00:42:10.020 And then Alan Dershowitz got involved.

00:42:11.660 That's what this movie is about.

00:42:13.080 It's based on Alan's book.

00:42:14.000 And Alan and a team of lawyers and law students got the conviction overturned and got Klaus a new trial.

00:42:21.620 And ultimately, at that new trial, he was acquitted and went on his merry way.

00:42:27.020 So keep going.

00:42:27.760 I just wanted them to know what you're talking about.

00:42:29.460 Yeah, and I assumed he was guilty.

00:42:31.020 And I took the case because there were some serious constitutional issues.

00:42:34.300 They had excluded evidence.

00:42:35.900 They had not permitted him to get access to certain documents.

00:42:39.460 And then the more deeply I got into the case with my students and medical students,

00:42:43.120 and we went into the whole insulin theory, we concluded that there was no crime,

00:42:47.520 that she had gone into a coma as a result of reactive hypoglycemia and taking off medicine prescriptions

00:42:56.060 and doing a lot of terrible things to herself.

00:42:59.080 And in the end, I came away fairly well convinced that he was innocent.

00:43:03.480 And it surprised me.

00:43:05.020 I've had the opposite, too.

00:43:06.160 I've had cases where I thought the person was probably innocent.

00:43:09.080 And then the more I learned about the case, the more I learned they were guilty.

00:43:11.700 Look, we're not the judges.

00:43:13.860 The judges, the jurors decide.

00:43:16.060 We're the advocates.

00:43:16.980 We present one point of view.

00:43:19.400 Even on the terrible Jeffrey Epstein case, when I first took the case,

00:43:24.420 he had been accused only of having sexual contact with a very small number of people

00:43:30.620 who he said were over the age of consent but turned out to be under the age of consent.

00:43:34.880 Then it turned out, of course, there was much more overwhelming evidence that none of us

00:43:39.100 were aware of that made it clear that he was something very different from what he appeared

00:43:43.600 to be when I first agreed to represent him.

00:43:45.440 Let me ask you that one.

00:43:46.240 Let me ask you that one.

00:43:47.120 Does that one give you pause when you when you learn that it let's say he had come to

00:43:50.820 you when he'd been accused, as we now know, let's call the number 80 underaged girls.

00:43:56.200 Would you have taken that case?

00:43:58.420 Here's my rule on taking cases.

00:44:00.020 I don't represent people who are in the business of committing crimes, so I don't represent

00:44:05.140 mafia members knowingly.

00:44:06.760 I don't represent terrorists, and I would not represent somebody who had as his basic

00:44:12.940 preoccupation abusing young women.

00:44:16.420 I defend people once for one crime, so if I knew he was still doing it, then I would

00:44:22.680 not have taken this case.

00:44:23.940 You get one.

00:44:24.780 I want to talk to you about Epstein in one second because it's just the whole thing is fascinating,

00:44:28.040 but can we talk about OJ for one minute?

00:44:30.280 So you came in as the appellate lawyer on the OJ case and, you know, sort of the big

00:44:34.400 brained man who was going to help with the legal issues.

00:44:37.760 And can you are you I've never asked you this before, but do you think that OJ committed

00:44:43.500 those murders?

00:44:45.040 You know, I can't.

00:44:46.760 One day when Bibi Netanyahu was elected prime minister in Israel and he called me and my

00:44:52.920 wife to come see him because I had known him when he was a student at MIT.

00:44:56.460 And he takes me aside and he says, Alan, I have to ask you a question.

00:45:00.040 I've been dying to ask you.

00:45:00.940 I thought it would be about Iran or the Palestinians.

00:45:02.760 He said, did OJ do it?

00:45:04.540 And I said, Mr. Prime Minister, there's a question I've been dying to ask you.

00:45:08.220 Does Israel have nuclear weapons?

00:45:10.120 He said, Alan, you know, I can't answer that.

00:45:12.060 I said, Bibi, you know, I can't answer that.

00:45:14.340 So, you know, you can't answer certain questions about whether your client is guilty or innocent.

00:45:19.600 I have to tell you that I did think that if he had taken the witness stand, as F. Lee

00:45:26.040 Bailey and others wanted him to do, he probably would have been convicted as he was found liable

00:45:31.400 in the civil suit because we didn't really assert his innocence at the trial as much as

00:45:37.600 we did the fact that the government didn't prove the case scientifically beyond a reasonable

00:45:42.820 doubt.

00:45:43.240 So there are various tactics that you engage in depending on what you think the quality of

00:45:47.940 the evidence is.

00:45:48.680 What about, so if you're, when you're representing OJ Simpson and he's accused of double murder

00:45:54.480 of his wife, she was his ex-wife at the time, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman.

00:46:01.120 What's it like when you're sitting across from them in a jail cell elsewhere?

00:46:05.980 Are you thinking this could be a double murderer?

00:46:09.120 What's behind those eyes?

00:46:11.320 Like what's that like?

00:46:12.340 Well, the worst thing is when you're sitting in the courtroom and you have OJ sitting on one

00:46:17.860 side of you and you have the Goldman sitting on the other side of you looking at you and

00:46:22.380 you say to yourself, I may be representing the man who murdered their son.

00:46:26.880 It is a horrible, horrible feeling.

00:46:29.160 Look, I sat across from Rodovan Karadzic, the man who was thought to be responsible for

00:46:34.080 the murder of thousands of people in the former Yugoslavia.

00:46:38.100 I sat next to him in his jail cell in The Hague and he served me tea and he was an educated

00:46:44.700 psychiatrist and we were talking about Hegel and Kant and here he was, a man who may have

00:46:51.300 been responsible for killing thousands of people.

00:46:53.480 It's a horrible, horrible experience, but it's not so different from a doctor or a priest.

00:46:59.400 Doctors sit across from people who have done terrible, terrible things and you're trying

00:47:04.920 to cure them and allow them to go back and do even worse things or priests or rabbis who

00:47:10.620 are asked to give forgiveness to people who have done terrible things.

00:47:15.140 We have a role to play and it's an important role to play.

00:47:18.380 And it's very hard to know that you may be responsible.

00:47:22.120 I don't go to victory parties for that reason.

00:47:24.920 When I win cases, and I've won a lot of cases, I've won like 23 out of my 28 murder homicide

00:47:30.500 related cases.

00:47:31.600 I think I have probably the best record of any private appellate lawyer in these kinds

00:47:35.640 of cases.

00:47:36.440 I have never gone to a victory party when I've won the case because somebody's dead, somebody's

00:47:41.760 suffering greatly.

00:47:43.020 And this is not a victory for morality necessarily, it's a victory for the law.

00:47:48.540 Yeah, for the system.

00:47:49.420 Alan, there's a great line at the end of Reversal of Fortune where you look at Klaus von Bülow

00:47:53.640 and you remind him, the quote is, morally, you're on your own.

00:47:59.600 Have you ever had to worry about repeat crimes?

00:48:04.020 You know, I mean, I think, I don't know, especially in the case of a guy like Epstein, by the time

00:48:09.720 the initial plea deal was struck, the one that became so controversial and wound up causing

00:48:14.600 our then Department of Labor to have to step down because he was the DA who agreed to this

00:48:18.880 plea deal.

00:48:19.280 But you were on the other side negotiating for him.

00:48:21.620 Do you ever have the feeling of, oh, God, what did I just unleash him to?

00:48:25.880 Yeah, of course, especially since, according at least to the prosecution, Epstein did it

00:48:31.260 again and continued to do it.

00:48:32.780 I would not have represented him a second time.

00:48:34.900 If he had called me, I terminated my relationship with him completely once I helped negotiate

00:48:40.920 the deal.

00:48:42.500 I was never, ever his friend or acquaintance once I knew what he had done or even what

00:48:48.640 he was accused of doing.

00:48:49.760 So you make a very sharp distinction between professionally representing somebody.

00:48:54.520 Once he was accused, every minute he spent with me, he paid.

00:48:57.880 He paid not only for his case, but for the pro bono cases that I do 50 percent of my cases

00:49:03.280 on.

00:49:04.100 And so it was a completely professional relationship.

00:49:07.700 But I would never.

00:49:08.420 And what people don't realize is that Epstein, he were he wormed his way into several very

00:49:14.300 esteemed institutions from MIT to Harvard by trying to cozy up to people like Alan.

00:49:19.940 And and he donated a lot of money and he wasn't wearing a shirt that read, I, I molest young,

00:49:27.280 very young girls.

00:49:28.100 No, no.

00:49:28.880 It took a while for people, the people in these institutions to get it.

00:49:32.680 But the of course, there's a question about when when they got it and when they should

00:49:36.500 have gotten it.

00:49:37.240 And sure, I want to ask you about that.

00:49:39.720 So because, you know, they say, let me just start with that plea deal, because I read all

00:49:44.340 about the case now.

00:49:45.620 And the most number one, you ultimately got accused by one of his victims, which we'll get

00:49:51.380 to.

00:49:51.580 But the first thing that was very controversial for you was you and the other defense lawyers

00:49:55.840 were very aggressive in going after the very first victims that came forward against him

00:50:00.920 and cut a plea deal for Jeffrey.

00:50:03.080 That was a gift to him.

00:50:04.660 He pled guilty to one count of solicitation prostitution, one solicitation prostitution

00:50:08.860 with a minor.

00:50:09.540 And he had to register as a convicted sex offender.

00:50:12.140 But that was nothing, given that it was at least six girls.

00:50:14.940 And by the time they actually signed the deal, there were at least 34 girls, including several

00:50:20.220 minors who had come forward.

00:50:21.260 He hated the deal.

00:50:22.500 He hated the deal.

00:50:23.520 He thought I had abandoned him.

00:50:25.400 He didn't want to pay the legal fee.

00:50:27.120 He said, why am I having to register as a sex offender?

00:50:30.280 He actually fired me because he thought he could get a better deal.

00:50:34.580 And he did get a better deal.

00:50:36.200 Initially, I had gotten him a deal in the state where he would plead to a felony, register

00:50:41.060 as a sex offender.

00:50:41.920 He then fired me and said he could get a better deal.

00:50:44.700 And he did get a better deal from the state, which is when the FBI came in.

00:50:49.180 So I was part of the legal team.

00:50:51.260 Remember, they had a very strong state case against him because all the young girls lived

00:50:55.260 in Palm Beach County.

00:50:56.160 But they had a very weak, perhaps non-existent federal case because they had to prove for

00:51:00.720 a federal case that he transported young women in interstate commerce with an intent

00:51:06.500 to have sex with them.

00:51:07.500 They just didn't have that, which is why they made the deal they made.

00:51:11.220 Plead to a state offense, and then we won't prosecute you for the federal offense.

00:51:15.460 If they had prosecuted him for the federal offense, we very likely would have won the

00:51:19.360 case.

00:51:19.740 Okay, but what about the two things that were very controversial about that deal that you

00:51:26.880 guys struck was, number one, it was specifically written into it that the victims not be notified.

00:51:32.760 And number two, the entire plea deal was kept under seal, meaning the victims and those

00:51:38.780 representing them had no idea it had even happened.

00:51:41.960 And a court leader ruled that that violated the law because there is a victim notification

00:51:45.620 requirement.

00:51:46.760 Right.

00:51:47.240 But then that was reversed by the 11th Circuit, and that's now on appeal to the entire end

00:51:51.840 bank.

00:51:52.460 Look, defense attorneys try to get the best deal we can.

00:51:55.640 It's up to the prosecutor to say no.

00:51:58.380 And so you can be justly critical of the prosecutors for allowing the deal to be secret.

00:52:03.020 But every deal I ever make with anybody, we always try to keep it under wraps if possible.

00:52:09.620 Well, that's what defense attorneys try to do.

00:52:12.380 Our job is to get the best deal for our clients.

00:52:15.020 The prosecution's job is to get the best deal for the public and for the government.

00:52:18.900 But don't ask us to try to get the best deal for the public or the victims.

00:52:23.560 That's not our job.

00:52:24.940 No, I'm not disputing that.

00:52:27.740 Like, all along, I've looked at it saying, all right, that would not have been my favorite

00:52:31.560 client.

00:52:31.980 Harvey Weinstein would not have been my favorite client, nor OJ.

00:52:34.460 But I understand what defense lawyers do.

00:52:36.840 I mean, there is a role for them in our system.

00:52:39.380 And most people hate their guts until they need them.

00:52:42.600 It's like people's attitudes towards guns.

00:52:45.600 They don't like them.

00:52:46.600 A lot of people hate them.

00:52:47.440 Don't even think about them until they need one.

00:52:50.740 I don't know.

00:52:51.200 Do you like, let me ask it this way.

00:52:52.900 When you talk to your wife about that, does she say, ah, Alan, what are you doing?

00:52:57.360 How could you have represented him?

00:52:59.100 You know, is she a moral conscience for you in that?

00:53:02.100 She understands.

00:53:03.060 But just this week, she has laid down a rule and told me I could not represent somebody

00:53:08.160 who was calling me.

00:53:09.680 And I listened to her.

00:53:12.180 It only took 80 years.

00:53:14.700 Well, when it came to the to the President Trump's representation on the floor of the Senate,

00:53:19.460 she initially said she didn't want me to do it.

00:53:21.520 And ultimately, she agreed that it was important enough and that I really wanted to do it.

00:53:29.080 And I think she regrets letting me do it.

00:53:31.380 I listened to my wife a lot.

00:53:33.140 Look, getting back to Epstein for a minute, I was introduced to him by the Lady Rothschild,

00:53:37.480 Lynn Rothschild, a very eminent woman.

00:53:41.020 And she told me that he was a great man.

00:53:43.260 And the president of Harvard was a close friend of his.

00:53:45.800 And he was coming to Martha's Vineyard for a day.

00:53:47.700 Could he stop by and say hello?

00:53:48.900 And he stopped by, he brought a bottle of champagne.

00:53:51.940 He met me and my wife and my family and my children.

00:53:54.860 He was charming.

00:53:55.860 Nobody had any idea.

00:53:57.900 And then we met him with some youngish women in their late 20s.

00:54:03.120 And my wife was critical of that because he was in his 40s, but not critical enough to say,

00:54:08.720 you don't have anything to do with him.

00:54:10.500 And we had no idea that he was ever in connection or in proximity with anybody.

00:54:15.820 Well, that's the thing for me as an outsider, I look at the case and I say, what is the evidence?

00:54:23.240 Because this one of his accusers ultimately accused you and it turned into this big back

00:54:27.400 and forth.

00:54:28.100 And you asked for the FBI to investigate it.

00:54:30.980 You asked for the Southern District of New York federal attorney, U.S.

00:54:33.440 attorney to investigate it.

00:54:34.600 You hired the former FBI director to look into it.

00:54:37.820 I mean, you went after that accusation.

00:54:39.880 What more could anybody do?

00:54:41.700 I have nothing to hide.

00:54:43.400 Well, I'll ask you about that.

00:54:44.460 But I know.

00:54:46.000 So that's where it spun.

00:54:47.240 But I think, you know, it just it grew so quick.

00:54:51.680 And so I just snowballed into such a world case that you got swept up in it.

00:54:58.620 And I think, I don't know.

00:54:59.860 Is that one that you regret?

00:55:01.180 Would you now knowing what you know, would you have turned it down?

00:55:05.140 Of course, I would have never met Jeffrey Epstein.

00:55:07.340 It was the worst thing that ever happened to me in my life meeting him.

00:55:10.520 And I'll never forgive Lynn Rothschild for having introduced me and having basically presented

00:55:16.060 him to me as this wonderful, wonderful person.

00:55:18.900 I wish I had never met him, but I had no idea he was doing anything wrong.

00:55:23.060 And the moment I learned about it, I terminated my relationship with him, my any personal relationship

00:55:27.580 I had with him.

00:55:28.940 As far as the woman who accused me, I never met her, never heard of her.

00:55:32.320 I have emails that she tried to suppress in which she acknowledges that she didn't know

00:55:37.460 who I was and she never met me.

00:55:39.440 She then writes a manuscript about her sexual exploits in which she says she saw me once

00:55:44.460 but never met me and certainly never had sex with me.

00:55:47.740 She told her best friend that she was prescient to falsely accusing me as the result of pressure

00:55:53.160 from her lawyers to try to get a billion dollars from Leslie Wexner.

00:55:56.860 So there's never been a clear or open and shut case.

00:56:01.600 I will say in her manuscript, she doesn't say I never had sex with Alan Dershowitz, but

00:56:05.500 she doesn't list you as one of the people with whom she did.

00:56:08.440 She says, no, no, no.

00:56:09.540 It's much more than that.

00:56:10.880 She says she lists all the people she had sex with.

00:56:13.060 And then she said she once saw me in the room with Jeffrey Epstein talking about business.

00:56:19.460 This is after she gets an email from a journalist saying, include Dershowitz in your book.

00:56:24.580 He'll help sell because he wrote Reversal of Fortune.

00:56:27.460 So she includes me in the book as somebody she did not have sex with, as someone she only

00:56:31.780 saw once.

00:56:32.720 That really is an admission that she never had any contact with me, never even met me.

00:56:38.840 But here's the question I've been wanting to ask.

00:56:40.140 And that's all going to come out at trial.

00:56:41.200 Here's the question I've been wanting to ask you.

00:56:42.620 You dared her to sue you for defamation because you came out and said she's a liar.

00:56:46.520 And you said, if I if I'm the liar, go ahead and sue me for defamation.

00:56:50.620 And then she did.

00:56:52.360 And you wound up settling the case in response.

00:56:55.460 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:56:57.060 The fact you didn't settle the case.

00:56:58.800 No, no, no.

00:56:59.480 I settled the case with her lawyers.

00:57:01.300 I would never settle a case with her under any circumstances.

00:57:04.920 What do you mean?

00:57:05.360 I guarantee you she will never.

00:57:07.060 The lawyers were the named plaintiffs.

00:57:09.360 The net.

00:57:09.700 Yeah, it was Edwards and Casale versus Dershowitz.

00:57:12.940 These were the two lawyers.

00:57:14.160 I had accused them of unethical conduct.

00:57:17.920 And they offered to settle the case in exchange for them acknowledging that they had made a

00:57:24.340 mistake in accusing me.

00:57:26.000 They made a tactical mistake in attaching that accusation to another motion.

00:57:29.400 Well, they didn't say tactical.

00:57:30.480 They said a mistake to accuse me and they withdrew the accusation.

00:57:36.060 And so I settled the case against them.

00:57:38.260 I did not settle the case against Virginia Roberts.

00:57:41.580 I never would and I never will.

00:57:42.740 Is that is that filed and ongoing?

00:57:45.740 It is.

00:57:46.680 She's suing me.

00:57:47.500 I'm suing her.

00:57:48.960 I'm suing her lawyer, David Boyce.

00:57:51.040 David Boyce is suing me.

00:57:52.380 I never sued anybody.

00:57:53.520 I was never sued until all this all this happened.

00:57:56.220 The first 75 years of my life, I never was sued.

00:57:59.360 I never expected to spend the last years of my life litigating my reputation.

00:58:03.900 But, you know, I have never done anything wrong in my personal life, period.

00:58:09.160 50 years of teaching at heart, hundreds of women students, faculty, colleagues, research

00:58:15.080 assistants, secretaries, never a complaint against me for inappropriate conduct.

00:58:19.660 And then suddenly this comes along and I'm going to litigate and fight.

00:58:24.300 I could have easily just denied it and let it go away.

00:58:26.380 But I want to disprove it beyond any doubt.

00:58:29.500 And I want the people who falsely accuse me to pay a very heavy price for false accusations,

00:58:35.140 because when they falsely accuse somebody knowingly for money, they destroy the Me Too movement.

00:58:41.300 They destroy the credibility of people who are real victims.

00:58:45.100 And when I collect my money about this, I'm also suing Netflix,

00:58:49.580 I'm going to contribute half of the money to people who are real victims of sexual abuse

00:58:55.160 and have been falsely accused of sexual abuse, because I think the balance is important to be struck.

00:59:01.800 One of the reasons why the Jeffrey Epstein case went undiscovered for so long is that

00:59:06.740 he intentionally chose what the law might consider, quote, imperfect victims.

00:59:13.600 And by that, I just mean girls who could be discredited as having lied before,

00:59:18.460 having a drug problem or coming from broken homes and so on.

00:59:21.820 And that's no accident.

00:59:22.800 Most of these predators wind up doing that.

00:59:24.620 It's like they have a sixth sense, right, for who to target.

00:59:28.960 And but but the truth is, in the case of the woman accusing Alan, is that she has been caught in several untruths.

00:59:38.080 She lied about being with Alan Tipper Gore.

00:59:40.800 She lied about having dinner with Bill Clinton on Epstein's island.

00:59:44.080 She said she vividly remembered spending her 16th birthday with Epstein,

00:59:47.040 later admitted she only met him later when she was 17.

00:59:49.500 So you could go down the list.

00:59:51.020 And so what but what happens in these cases is so many of these Me Too cases is we've gotten to the point where it's enough for somebody to make an allegation.

00:59:59.500 And then and then the men, they don't get due process.

01:00:03.740 It's trial by media.

01:00:05.360 And if you don't win the media war, you're you're done.

01:00:09.720 There's something else that you're leaving out.

01:00:12.160 Many of the men are also imperfect.

01:00:14.200 That is this woman, Virginia Roberts, accused me.

01:00:17.740 She accused Prince Andrew.

01:00:18.880 She accused Barack.

01:00:20.400 She accused Leslie Wexner.

01:00:22.780 She accused Richardson.

01:00:24.620 She accused a whole bunch of people.

01:00:26.100 Some of those people haven't responded.

01:00:29.720 Why?

01:00:30.300 Because they probably have something to hide.

01:00:32.740 The reason I fought back is my life is an open book.

01:00:35.880 I have never had sexual contact with any human being other than my wife during the relevant period of time.

01:00:44.240 Period.

01:00:44.940 I have never touched anybody.

01:00:46.580 I've never hugged anybody.

01:00:47.860 I don't do that.

01:00:49.060 They picked the wrong innocent victim in accusing me.

01:00:51.800 In accusing some of the others, they know they're not going to fight back because even if it's a false accusation in relation to Virginia Roberts, they have things to hide.

01:01:01.200 They don't want their sex life to become a matter of litigation.

01:01:04.760 I don't care because if every day of my life, from the day I met Jeffrey Epstein until today, became public, it would show that I have had sexual contact with one woman.

01:01:16.720 And by the way, I have all of my travel records that prove where I was every single day during the two and a half year period that Virginia Roberts knew Jeffrey Epstein.

01:01:26.800 I can document where I was every single day.

01:01:29.360 Don't you think, you know, for you, this came out, I guess, 2014 was when she first mentioned you.

01:01:35.860 But as soon as you were dismissed politically because of your defense of Trump and other things like that, this is a perfect excuse for them to say they don't believe you.

01:01:45.500 And I'm not taking a position on your case one way or the other.

01:01:47.840 I will say you very, very aggressively defended yourself in a way that that the others have not.

01:01:52.580 You're right.

01:01:53.020 They've been very silent.

01:01:54.000 But I do think there's a bit of desire to dance on the grave, the professional grave of somebody who's been very successful, who might not hate Trump, who they perceive as having money or at Harvard, where most of us cannot go.

01:02:11.380 I don't know.

01:02:11.760 What do you think?

01:02:12.900 To what extent has that played into the shunning that you've received?

01:02:16.060 Well, there's no question about that.

01:02:18.240 There's no grave to dance on.

01:02:19.840 I'm 82.

01:02:20.520 I'm still very active.

01:02:21.560 I walk my seven miles a day.

01:02:23.420 I write my 3,000 words every day.

01:02:27.220 I've written five books in the last 11 months.

01:02:30.460 And I'm working on a sixth.

01:02:32.420 And, you know, I'm very active.

01:02:33.860 So there's no grave to dance on because I'm fighting back.

01:02:36.880 But you're absolutely right.

01:02:39.160 Because of my defense of President Trump on the floor of the Senate, people wish, hope that I was guilty of the Epstein thing so that it all fits together as one.

01:02:50.200 Oh, he's a bad guy.

01:02:51.560 He defends Trump and he had improper relations with a woman who was 17 or 18 years old.

01:02:58.900 The first is true.

01:03:00.560 I did defend President Trump on the floor of the Senate.

01:03:03.020 I also defended Jeffrey Epstein.

01:03:05.020 You can criticize me for that.

01:03:06.600 But I had nothing to do with Virginia Roberts, period.

01:03:09.900 And anybody who combines those and accuses me in public is going to be on the wrong side of a lawsuit.

01:03:17.960 I am suing Netflix.

01:03:20.540 I had a lawsuit against another network that falsely accused me.

01:03:25.200 I had a lawsuit against an Israeli journalist.

01:03:27.420 I am fighting back.

01:03:29.520 I am not going to allow myself to be made into a piñata or allow people to dance on my premature grave because I have nothing to hide.

01:03:39.960 I am proud of everything I've done in my life.

01:03:42.760 And I will continue to do it.

01:03:44.400 I'm not going to let it influence the way I live the rest of my life.

01:03:47.380 I got to ask you the $64,000 question.

01:03:50.080 Speaking of graves, did Jeffrey Epstein kill himself?

01:03:54.420 What do you think?

01:03:55.240 I think he probably did.

01:03:57.300 But I think that he probably paid off some guards to turn off the cameras and facilitate.

01:04:04.120 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.

01:04:14.400 And I think he said to himself, this is just surmised because, 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.

01:04:24.120 I suspect he said to himself, look, I've lived my 60 something years.

01:04:27.600 I've done my things.

01:04:29.060 It's over.

01:04:29.900 I don't want to spend the next 20 years in prison.

01:04:32.640 So I'm going to end it.

01:04:33.520 So I think he probably did kill himself.

01:04:35.440 But I suspect that he 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.

01:04:50.240 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.

01:05:00.060 So the cellmate was taken out and the cameras were off.

01:05:03.420 I suspect there was some some improprieties that contributed to his death.

01:05:08.140 That's just my surmise.

01:05:10.100 Alan Dershowitz still going strong at 82 years old.

01:05:13.360 Pleasure to have you here.

01:05:15.140 My pleasure to be on with you.

01:05:16.540 Thank you.

01:05:16.920 Keep doing great things.

01:05:17.940 Our thanks to Professor Alan Dershowitz for his time in the thoughtful interview.

01:05:25.620 And in the meantime, we'd love for you to make sure that you subscribe to the show, that you go, you download it as well, and then give us a five star rating if you're feeling generous.

01:05:34.700 Maybe leave me a comment.

01:05:35.820 I do go back.

01:05:36.540 I read them all.

01:05:37.400 It's super fun for me.

01:05:39.000 And some make me laugh.

01:05:40.280 Some make me cry.

01:05:41.080 Some make me feel connected to the audience.

01:05:43.360 Some I just skip right by because they're mean, but very rarely, very rarely.

01:05:46.700 So I appreciate that.

01:05:48.620 And I love having you guys back in my life.

01:05:50.820 Thank you for being here.

01:05:52.720 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

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The Megyn Kelly Show - October 14, 2020

Alan Dershowitz on SCOTUS, Epstein, and OJ ｜ Ep. 10

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