Prince Andrew Could Make Comeback With Sealed Evidence—Alan Dershowitz

Prince Andrew "should never have settled" his Jeffrey Epstein-related lawsuit and "everything will change" if his accuser's video-taped depositions are made public, lawyer Alan Dershowitz told Newsweek.

Virginia Giuffre accused both men of abusing her when she was a Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking victim but withdrew her allegations against Dershowitz, acknowledging in November 2022 that she made a mistake.

The Duke of York settled his lawsuit with Giuffre for an undisclosed sum in February 2022, having initially said he would fight to clear his name.

Alan Dershowitz Says Prince Andrew Should 'Never Have Settled'

Dershowitz told Newsweek there are depositions and video tapes that are sealed within the case Giuffre brought against him that could change "everything," and his team are pushing for their release.

On Prince Andrew, Dershowitz said: "I think it would be a useful thing for him and his lawyers to try to unseal the depositions and to try to unseal the video tapes.

"I think he should never have settled, but obviously he was pressured to do so. I hope he pursues it. The whole truth should come out about everybody."

Asked whether Andrew might ever return to public life, Dershowitz said: "I do. I think that if the material that is now sealed is uncovered by the media, then I believe a different version will emerge and he will be vindicated.

"So I think his fate depends on whether the material that the Giuffre [and her lawyer David] Boies side now wants to keep secret is kept secret. If that's still kept secret, the current version will go on. But if that's made public, I think everything will change."

In a statement to The New York Times, Giuffre said: "I now recognise I may have made a mistake in identifying Mr. Dershowitz."

Giuffre said in a statement to Newsweek: "I was shocked to read that Alan Dershowitz is claiming that our mutual dismissal of our lawsuits against each other somehow 'exonerated' him. The litigation was very stressful and damaging to my family, and to my health.

"We have endured years in which Mr. Dershowitz asserted my charges against him were a lie, made up out of whole cloth, perjury, and part of a purported extortion plot. He has now admitted there was no perjury, no extortion plot, and that rather than making up what I said, I honestly believed the charges I made against him."

A spokesperson added: "Whoever is telling Newsweek this is just not telling the truth."

Virginia Giuffre's Lawsuit Against Prince Andrew

Giuffre's lawsuit against Andrew accused him of raping her when she was 17 years old and included a now-famous photograph of the prince with his arm around her.

Her team argue it was taken in Ghislaine Maxwell's house on the night she was first made to have sex with the royal, before further incidents in New York and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

A filing by her lawyer David Boies read: "During each of the aforementioned incidents, [Giuffre] was compelled by express or implied threats by Epstein, Maxwell, and/or Prince Andrew to engage in sexual acts with Prince Andrew, and feared death or physical injury to herself or another and other repercussions for disobeying Epstein, Maxwell, and Prince Andrew due to their powerful connections, wealth, and authority."

Andrew first stepped back from public life in November 2019 after an interview with the BBC, in which he challenged her account of him sweating profusely by saying he had a medical inability to sweat.

This was induced by the trauma of serving on the front line in the Falklands War between Argentina and the United Kingdom in 1982 in the South Atlantic.

The prince said he had no recollection of meeting Giuffre and added: "Without putting too fine a point on it, if you're a man, it is a positive act to have sex with somebody.

"You have to have to take some sort of positive action and so therefore, if you try to forget, it's very difficult to try and forget a positive action, and I do not remember anything.

"I can't. I've wracked my brain and thinking, 'Oh...' When the first allegations came out originally, I went, 'Well, that's a bit strange. I don't remember this,' and then I've been through it and through it and through it over and over and over again and no, nothing. It just never happened."

Alan Dershowitz's Connection With Prince Andrew

Dershowitz's legal team sought to help Andrew obtain documents to aid his defence before the prince settled the case for an undisclosed sum.

The pair had met before the Epstein scandal put both their reputations on the line.

Dershowitz, whose latest book The Price of Principle was released in July, said: "I go to Evelyn de Rothschild's 70th—it must've been—birthday party, and who's there but Prince Andrew, so I meet Prince Andrew, and he asks to come to my class at Harvard.

"So, Prince Andrew comes to my class at Harvard, and the dean of Harvard Law School gives a dinner or lunch on his behalf, which I went to."

"He seemed sincere," the lawyer and author added. "He spoke up in my class. And the students liked him very much. He's likable. At one point, I was invited by the British consul general of New England to have dinner in Boston, and we were seated next to each other and we talked about the Middle East.

"He knew about the Middle East. We fundamentally disagreed. He was saying he got a lot of his ideas about the Middle East from Evelyn de Rothschild [the British financier who died on November 8]. I have no firm impression of him. I just think he was very badly advised in this case," Dershowitz added.

"He was much more critical of Israel—I mean, I'm critical of some Israeli policies—but he was far more critical, as was Evelyn de Rothschild."

Dershowitz Says Ghislaine Maxwell Sentence Was an 'Injustice'

Dershowitz said meeting Epstein was the "worst thing that happened to me in my life" but added that he felt the sentence handed down to Ghislaine Maxwell was too harsh.

He said: "I thought it was an injustice in the end. Certainly, the sentence was an injustice for all those years in prison. I hope she appeals.

"I've only met her maybe half-a-dozen times. When we first met, she took my wife and my daughter out, and they liked her very much. She's an elegant, charming, funny woman. We didn't know the dark side about her.

"I think the sentence is completely unjust and I think the verdict was very much influenced by the atmosphere. I think she was a scapegoat for Jeffrey Epstein and if she had been tried when Epstein were alive, she would not have been convicted," he added.

Dershowitz's book, The Price of Principle, dealt with the backlash against him, not only for his association with Epstein, but also for his decision to represent Donald Trump during impeachment proceedings.

On Epstein, he added: "I wish I had never met him. It was the worst thing that happened to me in my life professionally was being introduced to Epstein because he conducted this incredibly secret life that involved so many people.

"He's become one of the most radioactive people in the world. If you say Epstein and somebody else's name in the same breath, it's poison."

Update 11/16/22, 12:45 p.m. ET: This article was updated with a statement from Virginia Giuffre.

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