Court filings by US lawyer Alan Dershowitz revealed Tuesday that a woman had named former prime minister Ehud Barak as one of a number of important men she was forced to have sex with by Jeffrey Epstein.
Lawyers for Virginia Roberts Giuffre had asked a court in Florida not to allow Dershowitz’s team access to sealed records as part of Dershowitz’s defamation case against her for saying she was forced to have sex with him while she was a teen, the Miami Herald reported, as they said they were concerned he would distort the information or use it out of context.
However, during the course of the hearing, Dershowitz’s attorney Howard Cooper said in court that the team had in fact already obtained some of the depositions and that Dershowitz identified Barak as well as L Brands and Victoria’s Secret owner Leslie Wexner as two of the men Giuffre says she was trafficked to by Epstein, a wealthy financier convicted of sex crimes and suspected of many more, the Herald reported.
“Giuffre has also alleged that she was forced to have sex with former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barack [sic],” the filing read in response to the claims against Dershowitz. “Giuffre has offered no proof other than her uncorroborated word.”
Giuffre last year sued Dershowitz for defamation, and the celebrity attorney filed a countersuit in response.
Associates of Barak told Channel 12 news that the former prime minister’s name was being “scrawled in the news in order to repel the allegations made against Dershowitz. Dershowitz’s deposition states that the woman’s affidavit is false.”
Dershowitz, a close ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump and a member of the latter’s impeachment defense team, this week went on a media blitz against a recent Netflix series on the Epstein case, saying he only went to the convicted sex offender’s island once, before he was suspected of wrongdoing, and it was with his wife and daughter.
Giuffre has also claimed Epstein arranged for her to have sex with the UK’s Prince Andrew on three occasions — in London and at Epstein’s New York mansion when she was 17 and in the US Virgin Islands when she was about 18. Prosecutors in New York have wanted to speak with Andrew for several months as part of their examination of allegations, made by several women, that some of Epstein’s staff and his girlfriend helped recruit him underage sex partners.
Barak has been dogged over his ties to Epstein, which went back over 15 years, and became an unexpected hot-button issue in the 2019 election campaign in Israel after Epstein was arrested and later died in prison of an apparent suicide.
Barak, who entered a business deal with Epstein in 2015, years after the American financier served time for solicitation, has called long-rumored allegations of sex trafficking by Epstein “abhorrent” and announced that he had officially cut off all business ties with him.
Barak, who has been linked as a frequent visitor to Epstein’s properties, has long asserted that insinuations against him in Epstein’s context were a result of the “poisoned atmosphere” Netanyahu has fostered over the past two decades.
Neighbors in a New York Apartment building owned by Epstein’s brother said that Barak was a “frequent presence” in the building, The Daily Beast reported last year.
Residents told the outlet that they knew when the politician was in the building because there were “flashy cars” outside and his security detail in the lobby.
A resident told the outlet they were in the elevator with Hebrew-speaking security guards and another said she regularly saw a guard posted outside an 11th-floor apartment. A further resident said they saw a security detail in the lobby on at least a dozen occasions.
The report did not clarify how the residents knew that the security detail belonged to Barak.
The building has been tied to the financier’s alleged New York trafficking ring, The Daily Beast reported.
Asked about his stays by The Daily Beast, Barak said:
“Despite the fact that there was no wrongdoing on my part, and that there is not even the faintest suspicion of wrongdoing on my part, I’m not going to address these questions because in the current political environment in Israel, the mere fact of my response to such a question is churned up as spin in the political game.
“As a former prime minister I’m accompanied by bodyguards everywhere I go,” he added.
The Daily Mail’s online news site last year rejected an ultimatum by Barak to retract a “libelous” article insinuating he socialized with young women at the home of Epstein.
The US-based DailyMail.com said it stood by the story “100 percent,” and denied as “absurd” Barak’s claim that the decision to re-publish three-year-old photos of him entering the New York mansion of the disgraced billionaire was a bid to help his political rivals ahead of the elections. (The article did not appear in the main Daily Mail tabloid newspaper in Britain.)
The tabloid noted in its article that the women photographed also entering Epstein’s home did so “on the same day” as Barak and “within hours.”
However, the Mail did not provide a clear timeline of the photos, and it was not clear whether they were taken before Barak entered, during his time there, or after he left.
If he was in the house at the same time as the women, it could contradict Barak’s earlier assertions that he “never met Epstein in the company of women or young girls.”
Barak confirmed it was him in the photos, and has admitted to visiting Epstein’s mansions and private Caribbean island, but insists he never attended parties of a sexual nature there.
Header: Former prime minister Ehud Barak speaks at the Democratic Camp electoral alliance’s campaign launch in Tel Aviv on August 12, 2019. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)