Over the past several months, attorney Alan Dershowitz has become the ConWeb’s favorite liberal for his willingness to defend President Trump — for instance, WorldNetDaily managing editor David Kupelian declared him to be among “people of conscience and principle” because of his Trump defenses. Now, ConWeb components are defending Dershowitz himself over allegations raised as part of the Jeffrey Epstein sex scandal.
A Miami Herald series on Epstein repeated the claim of one of Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking victims that she had sex with Dershowitz — who has served as Epstein’s attorney — while underage. Dershowitz has regularly denied any involvement with the woman and has said he has never met her. But the story has persisted, so Dershowitz’s new conservative friends are running to his defense.
An anonymously written April 3 WorldNetDaily article uncritically repeats Dershowitz’s attack on the Herald for repeating the allegations against him — though it waited until the 11th paragraph to reveal that crucial part of it.The article also made sure to highlight Bill Clinton’s alleged connections to Epstein — but not Trump’s.
WND has previously buried Dershowitz’s link to the Epstein scandal, as well as Trump’s, while hyping Clinton’s link to it.
Newsmax also published an article the same day, but while it was more upfront about the allegations against Dershowitz, it was as one-sided as the WND piece; neither sought out the Herald for its response to his allegations.
And the Herald did have a response: a series of tweets in which it declared it stood by its story and claimed that in a meeting with the Herald, Dershowitz “read select passages from voluminous documents that he said vindicated him. He declined to let the journalists examine the documents or take copies.”
Neither WND nor Newsmax did a follow-up story reporting the Herald’s response. Newsmax did, however, publish an April 11 column by Dershowitz again attacking the accusations against him, though not mentioning the Herald by name, let alone reporting their response to his accusations.
Refusing to tell the full story to protect a political ally is not a good look for either WND or Newsmax.