Conservative lawyer Alan Dershowitz got into an angry shouting match with comedian Bassem Youssef on Piers Morgan Uncensored after the two men joined the show to discuss the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
Dershowitz and Youssef began by examining the theory that Epstein, the billionaire pedophile who died in a New York City jail cell in August 2019, was secretly a Mossad agent, which the former rubbished as unlikely.
But the conversation quickly became bad tempered when the Egyptian, 51, accused the former Harvard Law School professor, 87, of practising “gaslighting”.
He invoked the lawyer’s own past connections to the disgraced financier, alleging that his fellow guest had once settled a lawsuit with a woman who accused him of sexual abuse for “nearly a million dollars.”
“Innocent men don’t pay. They go to trial,” the comic taunted Dershowitz, leading the latter to angrily deny the accusation and complain that Youssef was defaming him on live TV.
“You’re lying. You’re defaming me. You are now going to be sued for saying I paid a million dollars,” Dershowitz said, appealing to the host to cut Youssef off.
Morgan duly stepped in to try to make peace, only for the comedian to continue to press Derhowitz and shout over him, the situation becoming ever more heated.
“I’m instructing my lawyers to file a lawsuit against him for saying I paid a million dollars,” Dershowitz said. “What happened is a woman falsely accused me. She admitted she may have mistaken me and confused me for somebody else. She dropped all of her charges. Not a single penny was paid. Nothing.”
He was referring to a federal civil defamation lawsuit filed against him in the Southern District of New York in April 2019 by the late Virginia Giuffre, which was ultimately dropped in November 2022 when Giuffre conceded she may have wrongly identified Dershowitz as a past abuser. No fees were awarded to either side.
“You saying that I paid a million dollars is gonna result in you having to pay me many millions of dollars,” the lawyer continued, resuming his threat against Youssef, who, undeterred, insisted his information came from a New Yorker article about the case.
“The New Yorker never said anything like that,” Dershowitz fumed. “You know, you’re such a liar. You know, I thought you were a comedian. I thought at least you’d be funny. You’re just a liar.”
“You’re somebody who is prepared to make any kind of antisemitic, anti-Israel statement. Now I want you to justify the million. I want you to justify that I paid a million dollars. I want you to justify that. Will you justify it? Will you justify that I paid a million dollars?”
Youssef held his ground, prompting Dershowitz to challenge him to produce the New Yorker article in question while accusing him of “lying through his teeth.”
Youssef duly searched for and found an article entitled “Alan Dershowitz, Devil’s Advocate” published by the periodical in July 2019, but his readings from it only led to further inconclusive squabbling.
The conversation ended with Dershowitz speaking on genocide and the distinction between different 20th and 21st century atrocities, earning a sarcastic thumbs up from Youssef.
Dershowitz, who has a long history of representing controversial clients – from OJ Simpson to Julian Assange, Harvey Weinstein and President Donald Trump, whom he spoke in defense of at his January 2020 Senate impeachment hearings – is also well known for issuing legal threats.
Last summer, he announced his intention to sue a Martha’s Vineyard farmer’s market vendor for allegedly refusing to sell him pierogi, claiming he was being discriminated against because of his personal politics.
