Alan Dershowitz is urging the Pulitzer Prize Committee to discount the Miami Herald and a reporter for the coveted award for a “fake news” series on Jeffrey Epstein that included false allegations against the Harvard law professor.
In an open letter to the committee — printed by the Gatestone Institute— Dershowitz claimed the series by Julie K. Brown “was not based on rigorous and objective investigation, but rather on one sided, and largely false tips from self-interested lawyers who used the series to their financial advantage.”
“So shame on Brown,” Dershowitz wrote. “Shame on the Miami Herald. And shame on the Pulitzer Committee if it fails to investigate Brown's reporting and encourages such fake news and shoddy journalism by rewarding it.”
According to Dershowitz, Brown refused to investigate or publish “highly credible information that undercut the simplistic and largely false narrative fed her by her biased sources.”
“I know, because I have been providing her with much of the documents and information she chose to bury rather than report,” he said.
Dershowitz wrote that Virginia Roberts Guiffre — the “primary source” for the Herald series — falsely alleged having underage sex with several high-profile men, including himself.
“She accused me of having sex with her on six occasions in different places, although I have never even met her.,” he wrote.
“A careful review of these records led Giuffre's own lawyer to conclude — in a lawfully recorded conversation— that it would have been impossible for me to have been where she falsely claimed to have had sex with me, and that his client's accusations against me were ‘wrong,’ ‘simply wrong.’”
Dershowitz wrote that Brown “admitted to me in a consensually recorded conversation that there is absolutely no evidence corroborating or supporting Giuffre's accusation against me, but she did not publish that important fact,” he added. “Nor did she publish the fact that Guiffre refused to accuse me on the record.”
“This is not journalism,” Dershowitz wrote. “It is certainly not prize-worthy journalism. It is advocacy.”