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ROUGH DRAFT TITLE
***ROUGH DRAFT TRANSCRIPT***
- - -
CASE NAME: BRADLEY J. EDWARDS and PAUL G. CASSELL vs.
ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ
WITNESS NAME: PAUL G. CASSELL
DATE OF DEPOSITION: 10/16/15
- - -
This is an unedited, unproofread,
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ESQUIRE DEPOSITION SOLUTIONS
(954) 331-4400
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THE VIDEOGRAPHER: We are now on the video
record. Today is Friday, the 16th day of
October, 2015. The time is 1:33 p.m.
We are here at 110 Southeast 6th Street,
Suite 1850, in Fort Lauderdale Florida for the
purpose of taking the videotaped deposition of
Paul G. Cassell. The case is Bradley J. Edwards
and Paul G. Cassell versus Alan M. Dershowitz.
The court reporter is Terry Tomaselli and the
videographer is Don Savoy, both from Esquire
Deposition Solutions. Will counsel please
announce their appearances for the record.
MR. SCAROLA: Jack Scarola appearing on
behalf of Bradley Edwards and Professor Paul
Cassell. With me is Joni J. Jones from the Utah
Attorney General's Office.
MS. McCAWLEY: Sigrid McCawley on behalf of
Virginia Roberts from Boies Schiller & Flexner.
MR. SIMPSON: Richard Simpson on behalf of
Defendant and Counter-Claim Plaintiff Alan
Dershowitz. And with me is my colleague Nicole
Richardson and Thomas Scott from the firm of Cole
Scott & Kissane. Ms. Richardson and I are from
the firm of Wiley Rein.
MR. SWEDER: Kenneth Sweder from the firm of
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Sweeder & Ross for Professor Dershowitz.
Thereupon,
PAUL G. CASSELL,
having been first duly sworn, was examined and testified
as follows:
THE WITNESS: I do.
DIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. Good morning or good afternoon, I guess?
A. Afternoon, yes.
Q. If I ask any questions today that you can't
understand, would you please let me know and I'll
attempt to rephrase or clarify it?
A. Sure.
Q. You're a former United States District Judge;
is that correct?
A. That's correct.
Q. When were you a judge?
A. From about 2002 'til about November 2007.
Q. Okay. So you were appointed by the first
President Bush?
A. Yes.
Q. Uh, second President Bush?
A. Second President Bush, yes.
Q. And then after resigning as a judge, you
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became a professor at the University of Utah; is that
correct?
A. Yeah I was professor -- excuse me -- before I
was a professor in the evening hours while I was a judge
from 2002 to 2007. And then I resumed full time
teaching at the University of Utah in around November of
2007 when I left the bench.
Q. Okay. And since you've left the bench, have
you also been affiliated with a law firm?
A. Yes.
Q. Could you tell me what that affiliation is
what --
A. Sure. I'm a special counsel with Hatch James
and Dodge. It's a law firm, small boutique litigation
law firm in Salt Lake City, Utah, and I occasionally do
cases with them.
Q. Is it fair to say that since 2007, since
resigning as a judge, you've been engaged at least on a
part-time basis in the practice of law?
A. Yes.
Q. And, in particular, in one of the cases
that's at issue here, what has been referred to as the
underlying CVRA case; you're familiar with that case?
A. Yeah. Let me be clear just the juxtaposition
of the causes, the CVRA case is not through Hatch James
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and Dodge. That's through the University of Utah. I'm
pro bono work through the University of Utah.
Q. You have entered an appearance in that case?
A. Correct.
Q. And in order to enter that appearance, you
were admitted pro hac vice; is that correct?
A. That's right.
Q. And to be admitted pro hac vice, you
certified that you were familiar with the applicable
rules including the rules of the southern district of
Florida; is that right?
A. That's right.
Q. And you're also familiar with the rules of
professional responsibility; is that correct?
A. Sure.
Q. Okay. As a judge, did you ever strike a
party's pleadings because they were impertinent,
scandalous, irrelevant?
A. I don't recall doing that immediately.
Q. Okay. To the best of your knowledge, you
don't recall any instance of doing that?
A. I mean what I did, I think, there were two
cases where I referred people to the Bar which was a way
of dealing with the pleadings that were inappropriate in
those cases.
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Q. Okay. But other than referring the two
parties to the Bar, you never entered, to your
recollection, striking a party's pleadings; is that
right?
A. That's right.
Q. Okay. I want to ask you a few questions
about the issue of striking pleadings. Would you agree
with me that courts generally disfavor a motion to
strike?
A. No.
Q. And that striking allegations from a pleading
is a drastic remedy to be resorted to only when required
for the purposes of justice and only when the
allegations to be stricken have no possible relation to
the controversy?
A. I think that's what some courts have said,
yes.
Q. And is it fair to say -- is that what you
represented to the court in response to
Professor Dershowitz's application to intervene?
A. That's right.
Q. And you wouldn't have represented that to the
court unless you believed it to be accurate; is that
right?
A. That's right.
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Q. Would you also agree that if there is any
doubt as to whether the allegations might be an issue in
the action, courts will deny the motion?
A. That was our position in our response to
Professor Dershowitz's motion to strike, yes.
Q. And in considering a motion to strike, the
court must consider the pleadings in the light most
favorable to the party making the pleading, correct?
A. Yeah, that's our position, that was our
position, yes.
Q. Okay. In your view, is it -- for an attorney
to ask a leading question at a deposition, does the
attorney have to have a good-faith basis to believe that
that question is true or the facts assumed in that
question are true?
A. I mean, that's a broad question, but as a
general rule, yeah.
Q. As a general rule -- I'm not being very
articulate --
A. Yeah.
Q. -- you don't ask a leading question about a
fact unless you have a good-faith basis to believe that
facts is true, correct?
A. I think that's right. I mean I don't know if
over the last day and a half, you know, narrow questions
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have been given very long answers. I am assuming you
want narrow answers; is that true?
Q. Well, that wasn't my question, but why don't
we stay on that --
A. I mean, I could discuss that at great length.
I didn't know if that's what you wanted me to do.
Q. I would like you to give a fair answer to my
questions and I'll let you answer your questions and if
follow up, I would ask that one at a time for the court
reporter.
I would ask that you answer the question
fairly and I'll try not to interrupt you. And then if
you would do your best to answer the questions, and as I
said, if you don't understand it, let me know.
A. Right.
MR. SCAROLA: Excuse me. I'm going to
interrupt you for just a moment. Pardon me.
There is this page that was placed in front of
me, and I don't know whether this was intended as
a delivery of something.
MR. SCOTT: No. You had asked for a copy of
the entry from Professor Dershowitz's book when
he made reference to it. I said I'd give you a
copy in the last deposition, and that's it. We
made a copy of it.
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MR. SCAROLA: Okay. Thank you. I had also
asked for all of the information regarding
communications with Rebecca, which I was told
that I would get today. Is that available?
MR. SCOTT: No. I told you that we would
consider if that -- I apologize. I said we will
consider that and you can put it in a request and
we will respond.
THE WITNESS: I would sure like to see that
before I answer any more questions. Is that
something you could make available?
MR. SIMPSON: I don't think that's necessary
to answer the questions I'm going to ask. I'm
not going to ask you any questions -- I won't ask
you any questions about Professor Dershowitz's
communications with this Rebecca that you've
heard about. You were in the room while he
testified, correct?
THE WITNESS: Right, but I mean there are --
there are broader subjects that extend beyond
those communications, so if you're going to ask
any questions about those broader subjects, I
would like to see the communications. That would
be helpful to me.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
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Q. I'm just going to ask you questions about
the case and about your knowledge, and all I ask is that
you give your best answers based on your knowledge.
A. And all I ask is, if you're going to ask any
questions touching on those communications and I get a
chance to take a look at the subjects addressed in those
communications --
Q. If I ask you a question that you need to look
at something that you've never seen before to answer,
why don't you let us know?
A. Okay. Will do.
Q. What is your understanding of the ethical
responsibility of an attorney in signing a pleading to
be filed in Federal Court, and let's say in the Southern
District of Florida, if that's any different than
elsewhere?
A. Sure.
Q. Just give me your understanding.
A. Sure. The obligation is to make sure that it
is a good-faith pleading based on the facts and the law
as the attorney understands them, and consistently with
the obligation of the attorney to zealously represent
the position of his client.
Q. Okay. Would you agree with me that it would
be unethical to use pleadings for an improper purpose,
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for a purpose other than to advance a cause in
litigation?
A. Sure.
Q. And would you agree with me that it would be
unethical to make allegation of misconduct by a person
in a pleading if that -- if those allegations were not
relevant to the case?
A. Sure.
Q. And would you agree --
A. Actually, not pertinent to the case.
Q. Not pertinent to the case?
A. Yeah. And when you say not relevant,
obviously, reasonable people can have disagreements
about what allegations are relevant to the case or not.
Q. And my question is that an attorney, it would
be unethical, do you agree, for an attorney to sign a
pleading where the attorney does not have a good-faith
basis that the allegations of misconduct are relevant to
the case, are pertinent to the case?
A. Pertinent to the case, and as I understand
for example under rule 11, the requirement is that the
allegations being advanced must not be frivolous.
Q. And that there's a good-faith basis for them?
A. Well, I mean if you're talking about good
faith frivolity, those are I mean, potentially different
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standards under the law. My understanding is that
frivolity is the standard for, for example, rule 11
sanctions.
Q. Is it unethical to include, in your opinion,
to include allegations in a pleading for the purpose of
generating publicity?
A. If that's the only purpose, sure, that it
would be inappropriate.
Q. And is it unethical to make allegations
without having done a reasonable investigation to
satisfy -- for the attorney to satisfy himself or
herself that there's a factual basis for the
allegations?
A. Something along those lines, sure.
Q. As a general matter, you agree with that
proposition?
A. Yes, sure.
Q. Would you agree that the scope of the
investigation, the reasonable investigation an attorney
must do, varies depending upon the nature of the
allegations being made?
A. Sure, yes.
Q. Let me finish -- we are both speaking at the
same time --
A. Sure.
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Q. -- so let me finish --
A. Sure. I just want to make sure you get an
opportunity to ask as many questions as you want so.
Q. Okay. And I appreciate that, but the court
reporter can't take down both of us at once. So we just
need to speak one at a time, but I appreciate that.
A. Good.
Q. I believe the last question I was asking you
about whether the scope of the investigation, what
reasonably required of an attorney varies depending upon
the nature of the allegations being made. I think you
said, yes; is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. And could you explain how, what in your
understanding of how --
A. Sure. I mean, obviously, they are going to
be some cases that are very complicated factually. More
investigation would be appropriate there. There can be
some situations that very simple factually, less
investigation would be factually necessary there. Same
points about legal issues, too, some cases are complex
legally, some cases are simple legally.
The more legal investigation would be
required for the more complex cases.
MR. SCAROLA: Professor Cassell, I know it is
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a little bit unnatural for you to be responding
to questions that are being asked immediately to
your right and not be looking directly at the
examiner the entire time, but because this is
being videotaped, it might be helpful if you can,
to the extent that you're able, to look into the
camera so that the jury for whom this may be
played --
THE WITNESS: I see.
MR. SCAROLA: -- at a later time gets to see
your full face.
THE WITNESS: All right. I hope you won't
consider me rude then --
MR. SIMPSON: I will not consider -- it's
good advice from your counsel and I will not
consider you rude.
THE WITNESS: Thank you.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. I want to ask you some more questions about
the scope of investigation. Would you agree that an
allegation of serious misconduct by another person
generally requires more investigation than a lesser
serious type of allegation?
A. Sure. That's a fair statement.
Q. And so, for example, before accusing a person
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of engaging in criminal misconduct, the attorney needs
to do a thorough investigation; is that right?
A. Yeah, under the circumstances, sure. I
should say in light of the circumstances, obviously, you
know, different kinds of cases can have different
circumstances.
Q. Okay. Is one of the considerations that goes
into that how much -- whether there's time pressure to
get the pleading on file?
A. Sure. That would be one of the factors.
Q. And how much time the attorney has to
investigate the facts?
A. Yes. That would be one of the factors as
well.
Q. Okay. And so before making -- where an
attorney's client has no pressing need to get a pleading
on file immediately, and the pleading is going to
include serious allegations of misconduct by another
person, an ethical attorney will take the time needed to
do a full investigation; is that fair?
A. That's fair, and the converse of your
proposition is also fair. For example, if a client has
a pending discovery dispute in front of a judge that
could be ruled on any day, that would be an exigency
that would require pleadings to be filed more quickly
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than -- than otherwise.
Q. And if the dispute concerned, for example, a
specific discovery issue, would you expect the response
to be directed to that issue?
A. I would expect that the record would be built
so that it would be available for the discovery issue,
yes.
Q. Okay. I am going to ask the reporter to mark
as Cassell -- am I pronouncing your name correctly?
A. Yes, it's Cassell, yes.
Q. Okay. Could I ask the reporter to mark as
Cassell Exhibit 1 -- I will hand that to the reporter.
(^ Plaintiff's ^ Defendant's I.D. Exhibit
No. 1 - ^ description was marked for identification.)
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. Let me identify that for the record. I may
want to mark two things.
A. Okay.
Q. Exhibit 1 is documented Plaintiff's Response
to Motion for Limited Intervention by Alan M.
Dershowitz, and I'm going to ask the reporter to mark
another exhibit at the same time. This will be
Exhibit 2, and this is a document entitled Jane Doe
Number 3 and Jane Doe Number 4's motion pursuant to rule
21 for joinder in action. Both cases having been filed
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in the case Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2 versus the United
States. This is number 2.
(^ Plaintiff's ^ Defendant's I.D. Exhibit
No. 2 - ^ description was marked for identification.)
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. Mr. Cassell, do you have those documents in
front of you?
A. I do.
Q. Okay. I'm going to ask you first about
Exhibit 2 before 1, since exhibit 2 is first in
chronological order.
A. Yes.
Q. Is this the motion for joinder that you filed
on behalf of the parties then known as Jane Doe Number 3
and Jane Doe Number 4 in what was called the CVRA
action?
A. This is the joinder motion, yes.
Q. Okay. And if you look at the last page
before the certificate of service --
A. Yes.
Q. -- over on page 12, it shows the document
being signed by Bradley J. Edwards and then it says and
Paul G. Cassell, pro hac vice, S.J. Queeny [sic] College
of Law
A. Quinney.
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Q. Quinney, got that one wrong, College of Law
at the University of Utah. Is that indicating your
signature to the document?
A. That's -- that's indicating not my signature,
but it's indicating that I stand behind the arguments
made in the document, yes.
Q. Much more articulate statement than I. I
simply wanted to confirm that you had authorized your
name to be listed as a counsel who was, for purposes of
the rules, vouching for this document?
A. Yes, I was vouching for this document
completely.
Q. Okay. And you list here your address as
being at the college of law at the University of Utah
with no qualification. If you compare that to the next
exhibit, Exhibit 1 actually --
A. Yes.
Q. -- your signature has a footnote that says,
this daytime business address is provided for
identification and correspondence purposes only, and is
not intended to imply institutional endorsement by the
university of Utah; do you see that?
A. I do see that.
Q. Why was that footnote not included on the
first pleading filed which is Exhibit 2?
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A. The footnote -- one of the problems with the
the Word processing program to drop a star footnote is
it requires, under the word programing, you have to to
have different sections in the document because
otherwise it would be footnote -- let's see.
Yes, so there was already a footnote 1 on the
joinder motion and so, what happens with footnotes is if
you identify it as footnote, put in a footnote where the
University of Utah signature block is, for example, it
becomes footnote 2, so then you have to create a
different section and then once you have a different
section you can establish a new number and a new
nomenclature instead of numbers. You can have the
asterisk, and so somehow with the signature block
getting reprocessed here, that star footnote dropped off
and within I think -- I think it was about three days, I
realized that the star footnote had dropped off, so I
filed a corrected pleading with the -- with the new star
footnote on it.
Q. You would agree with me that a fair-minded, a
reasonable reader looking at the signature block on the
as filed original document, could conclude that the
University of Utah was somehow endorsing or standing
behind this pleading?
A. I don't think that's quite fair. I think the
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way that works is, people know that when, for example,
you know, a Professor speaks from the university, they
are giving their own point of view. The -- a school
like the University of Utah has, gosh, several hundred
faculty members, if not more, and so any time a member
of the University of Utah speaks, they are giving their
views on the subject. There may be a range of views.
Some Professors at the university of Utah may
be in favor of crime victim rights. Other Professors
may be opposed to crime victim rights. Young people
generally jump to the conclusion that just because they
are hearing a Professor from a particular school speak,
that that necessarily means that they are saying
something that the university endorses.
Q. If that's true, why do you include the
footnote on some pleadings?
A. Well, I included the footnote in this
particular case, the dean at the law school said, hey,
you know, it might be useful just to drop a footnote in
just to make sure that there's no misunderstanding and I
said, sure, I would be glad to do that. And so I think
pleadings, in this case leading up to this, had the star
footnote. Apparently on the signature block had got
dropped out. And then we were able to fix that in a
couple of days on this one.
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Q. So is it accurate that after you filed what's
Exhibit 2, that the dean of the law school asked you to
file a corrected version with the footnote?
A. No. That misunderstands what I said. Early
on, just in talking -- I do a lot pro bono litigation
for crime victims all over the country, and I do that,
that's one of the reasons I'm at the University of Utah.
They have been very supportive of my pro bono work in
this case as well as in other cases, and so the dean
said, well, one of the things just might be helpful is
to drop a footnote. I don't think it was required that
I drop the footnote, nobody suggested it would be useful
to drop the footnote, and so I agreed to do that in this
case and in other cases as well, but somehow in this
particular pleading, the -- as I say, the signature
block possibly was a cut-and-paste from an earlier
pleading in the case, possibly it was some issue
involving that section feature of the word processing
program. The star footnote had dropped off.
And so once I realized that without anyone
calling that to my attention when I looked at the brief
a couple of days after we filed it, and said, oh, I need
to fix that and did, indeed, fix that as quickly as I
could.
Q. What was the context in which the dean asked
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you as a practice to drop the footnote; was it in
connection with this case or some other circumstance?
A. It was -- as I recall, it was several years
earlier. I don't know. Maybe a year or two earlier
than this particular litigation, from what I remember.
If I looked at some of my other pro bono cases around
the country, we might be able to get a sharper time
frame on that. I've done pro bono crime victims in a
lot of cases. And the dean just thought it might be
useful to have that kind of a footnote to avoid any
misunderstanding.
Q. Would you agree with me that in order to
allow your name to be listed as counsel on this
pleading, that you were required to have a sufficient
basis for the allegations based on what you knew as of
December 30th, 2014?
A. Sure. I think that's fair. Obviously, I
imagine one of the issues we are going to discuss here
today is what is a sufficient basis for filing a
pleading like that. So, yeah, in general, of course, we
had to have a sufficient basis for filing something like
this and I firmly believe that we did.
Q. And to put a point on my question, the way in
which to measure the knowledge is as of December 30th,
2014, so the facts that came to your attention after
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that date, by definition, could have been part of what
you were relying on to allow your name to be listed as
counsel on this document, correct?
A. That's right. With regard to this document,
we would be looking at knowledge on or before December
30th, 2014.
Q. Would you turn to page 4 of the document,
first full paragraph on the page, the second sentence.
Actually, third sentence, you say: In addition to being
a participant in the abuse of Jane Doe Number 3 and
other minors, Dershowitz was an eye witness to the
sexual abuse, et cetera. Do you see that?
A. Yes.
Q. Who were the other minors?
A. Well, one of the ways -- you want some
documentation of that?
Q. I want to know: You made an allegation here,
you first make an allegation that Professor Epstein
abused -- Jane Doe Number 3 -- Dershowitz. I'm sorry?
A. Right.
Q. Jane Doe Number 3 who is no longer anonymous,
Miss Roberts, correct?
A. Right. I'm sorry. Could you repeat the
question please.
Q. I just want to clarify that your pleading is
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alleging that Professor Dershowitz engaged in this
sexual misconduct with Miss Roberts; she's Jane Doe
Number 3, correct?
A. That's right. Jane Doe Number 3 is Miss
Virginia Roberts Goufrey ^ (ph).
Q. And I will ask you questions about that. But
my question now is: You also allege that Professor
Dershowitz was a participant in the abuse of other
minors besides Miss Roberts. Do you see that?
A. Yes, I see that.
Q. Who are the other minors?
A. So I don't know the exact name of the other
minors who were involved, but I do have an 89 page
police report from the Palm Beach Police Department
which lists, if I recall correctly, about 23 or 24 names
of minors who went to the Jeffrey Epstein mansion in
Palm Beach during a period of time that extends from --
let's see -- it would have been roughly, I don't know,
from probably about a six-month period in 2005 -- there
are a series of names. I don't think in this particular
case because of confidentiality reasons, we can put into
the record the names of those girls, but what I would
propose doing is putting into the record the 89 page
police report from the Palm Beach Police Department,
which has page after page after page after page of young
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girls going to the Epstein Palm Beach mansion and then
being sexually abused in some cases, at least one case,
forcibly raped. That is the basis for that particular
allegation.
Q. Mr. Cassell, does the police report you're
referring to at any point say Professor Dershowitz
abused any of these particular minors -- not were they
abused at the mansion -- but did it say anywhere that
Professor Dershowitz did that?
A. The police report itself does not refer to
Professor Dershowitz abusing these girls. However, when
you look at the police report, what it shows is a
pattern of egregious sexual abuse of approximately 23 to
24 young girls over an extended period of time at a
mansion that was owned by Jeffrey Epstein who was one of
the closest personal friends, from what I could gather,
of Mr. Dershowitz.
And so that was -- there's other information.
I don't want to filibuster you on that. I would be
happy to elaborate on that, but that is the first piece
of evidence that I would begin referring to. If you
want a more -- if you want -- just so the record is
clear, if you want to know all the bases, all the
grounds for which that allegation appears, then I would
like to make a more extended presentation.
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Q. We will get there. But my -- I want to make
sure we are clear about this.
Am I correct that the report itself never
says, Alan Dershowitz abused anyone?
A. That is a correct statement, I believe.
Q. And we won't -- and the report does
reflect -- the conclusion of -- it reflects abuse of
minors by Jeffrey Epstein, correct?
A. Oh yes, oh yea. What it shows is forcible
rape of underage girls, and not a, shall we say, one off
situation, but on something that is happening over,
let's say, this is roughly a six-month period, 180
days -- I mean, I think you know, they document roughly
speaking at least 180 sexual encounters give or take,
and in fact, on some days, what they document in that
police report is abuse that is taking place not once,
not twice, but three times during the day in this
mansion.
And so I certainly agree with you, if it's
possible, maybe my math is off here, 200 percent, that
this report documents repeated sexual abuse including
forcible rape by one of the closest friends of
Mr. Dershowitz, Jeffrey Epstein.
Q. So it's your testimony that Mr. Epstein was
one of Professor Dershowitz's closest friends?
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A. Yes.
Q. We will come back to your basis for that.
I want to go back to the police report.
We've clarified it never says Professor Dershowitz
abused anyone, correct?
A. It doesn't say that directly, but the police
report is part of a larger package of information that I
had available to me since you asked on December 30th
that suggested that Mr. Dershowitz was involved in the
abuse of minors.
I'm sorry. Let me correct that. In the
sexual abuse of minors, in particularly, minor girls.
Q. Would it be your position that anyone who was
a friend, or a friend of Mr. Epstein who visited his
house on more than a few occasions, that that's
sufficient to conclude that -- to allege that they
engaged in sexual abuse of minors?
A. No.
Q. Are we talking about guilt by association
here?
A. No. And that question requires a more
extended answer, which I would be happy to provide for
you, if you would like an extended answer.
Q. Let me ask you this question: You referred
to the police report, correct?
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A. Correct.
Q. And focusing now, not -- not on Virginia
Roberts, we are focusing on the other minors, correct?
I just have that in mind, right?
A. I'm sorry. Could you repeat the question?
Q. I want to make sure you're focusing on the
allegation in this pleading that Professor Dershowitz
abused other minors; do you have that in mind?
A. I do.
Q. Okay. First of all, I want to know, and for
this question you don't have to give the names, do you
have specific minors who you, at this point, contend
were abused?
A. I believe that the pool of people came from,
among other young girls, roughly 23 to 24 minors
identified in the Palm Beach Police Department report,
or other similarly-situated girls in either New York, in
the airplanes, or on -- in the Palm Beach mansion. So
this -- the problem that I have here frankly, I'm sorry,
but I think your question fairly calls for a longer
answer, I could give you the names of those girls if
Jeffrey Epstein would tell us the names of those girls
that he trafficked in Florida, in New York, on his
airplanes and elsewhere. But I think everyone in this
room is aware Mr. Epstein has repeatedly refused to
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answer questions about the names of the girls that he
was sexually trafficking. And that's one of the things
that has made this case so difficult, because if we
could get the names of those girls, then we could -- we
could try to help them.
We could -- we could start to unravel the
many crimes that Mr. Epstein has committed along with
his associates. So, again, I could go on longer, and I
don't want to filibuster your time, I think I've seen
illustrations of that recently, but I -- what I want to
do is make sure that -- that I could give additional
information if people like Mr. Epstein would cooperate
and give me the names of the girls that he was sexually
trafficking.
MR. SIMPSON: Move to strike the
nonresponsive portion of the answer.
Can I have the same standing objection,
Mr. Scarola?
MR. SCAROLA: No, I don't think -- I don't
think you will need a standing objection.
MR. SIMPSON: Well, I'll just make the
objection there and --
MR. SCAROLA: Thank you.
MR. SIMPSON: I will go back to my question.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
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Q. My question had nothing to do with whether
you could identify girls that Jeffrey Epstein abused.
My question was: As of December 30th, 2014 -- you don't
have to give me the name right now -- is there any
specific girl that you had evidence Professor Dershowitz
abused?
A. What I had was the police report moving girls
and the girls were named in the police report, although
the police report that I think has been made public has
the names redacted, those girls were moving through the
mansion at the time when, for example, household staff
were saying that Mr. Dershowitz was receiving massages.
And so, yes, I have 24 names in mind as
possible sexual abuse victims that Dershowitz may or may
not have abused. And I have not been able to pinpoint
exactly what happened, because the people who would be
in the best position to help me sort out what the names
were, specifically Jeffrey Epstein among others, have
refused to cooperate and give me those names.
MR. SIMPSON: Move to strike the
nonresponsive portion of the answer.
THE WITNESS: Can I ask what part of that was
nonresponsive in your view?
MR. SCAROLA: That's all right.
THE WITNESS: Okay.
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MR. SCAROLA: Professor Cassell, you don't
need to do that.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. If I understand you correctly, you said in
that answer question -- strike that.
If I understood you correctly, you said in
that answer that there was a universe of 24 girls I
believe you said or approximately, that Professor
Dershowitz may or may not have abused; is that your
position?
A. That's correct. It's been impossible to
narrow down exactly what happened because of lack of
cooperation from, for example, Jeffrey Epstein.
Q. If as of December 30th, 2014, based on your
information, Professor Dershowitz may or may not have
abused other minors, why did you allege that he did?
A. Your question, as I understood it, was did I
know the name of the particular girl that he may or may
not have alleged -- I'm sorry -- did I know the name of
the particular girl that he may have abused. And I
couldn't get the exact name, but what I had was
Mr. Dershowitz receiving massages in a time when,
according to the police report, massage was a code word
for sexual abuse of underage girls.
Q. And so was it your understanding as of
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December 30th, 2014, that every massage given to anybody
at Mr. Epstein's residence was a code word for sexual
abuse?
A. It was my understanding that the term
"massage" was frequently, if not almost invariably, used
as a code word for sexual abuse, or at least sexual
activity, if the girl happened to be over the age of 18.
But in most cases at least, or in many cases depending
on exactly what universe you're looking at, these were
underage girls, under the age of consent in the State of
Florida, they were under the age of 18.
Sometimes as young as -- I think it went all
the way down to, gosh, I'm trying to remember now, I
think 13 or 14 was was the youngest age in the police
report.
Q. Is it your position that as of December 30th,
2014, you had a sufficient basis under the Federal Rules
of Procedure and applicable ethical rules to allege that
anyone who got a massage at Mr. Epstein's residence had
abused minors?
A. No.
Q. What -- back up now. With respect again to
other minors as of December 30th, 2014, had anyone --
had any young woman, other than -- we will put -- I'm
going to ask about Virginia Roberts separately.
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A. Okay.
Q. Had any other young woman told you she had
been abused by Professor Dershowitz?
A. No other young women had told me that, no.
Q. Had, as of that date, had anyone told you
that Professor Dershowitz had abused other minors?
MS. McCAWLEY: I'm going to object for a
moment here to the extent that you're going to be
answering a question that requires you to divulge
any attorney/client communication with Virginia
Roberts, I have a standing objection that I'm
putting on the record right now.
Virginia Roberts does not waive her
attorney/client privilege with her lawyers, and
they are not entitled to testify as to
information that she intended to be confidential
that she communicated to her lawyers.
MR. SCAROLA: And I would instruct you not to
answer the question on that basis.
MR. SIMPSON: All right.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. I disagree with the position on the
privilege, but I will -- you're going to follow the
instruction not to answer those questions?
A. I am.
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Q. Okay. I want to put then aside Virginia
Roberts.
Had anyone else as of December 30th, 2014,
told you that Professor Dershowitz had abused any minor,
other than Virginia Roberts?
A. No one -- no other -- no other person, no
other person had spoken to me and told me that directly,
no.
Q. And when you say no other person, I'm
including not just any -- any victims of Mr. Epstein,
but anyone else, no one had said to you, I have
knowledge that Alan Dershowitz abused a minor, other
than Virginia Epstein -- Virginia Roberts; is that
correct?
MR. SCAROLA: Let me ask you for
clarification if I could. Are you asking whether
any person made that statement based upon the
direct personal knowledge of that person? And
the purpose for my clarification is to the extent
information was conveyed to Professor Cassell by
co-counsel, or anyone within the joint
representation or common interest privilege, I'm
not going to permit him to answer that question.
If it's anybody outside that, he clearly can. So
if you're looking for someone with direct
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knowledge, he can answer that question, because I
assume none of the lawyers within the common
interest privilege had that direct knowledge.
MR. SIMPSON: I'm asking -- for the purpose
of the questions I'm putting aside Virginia
Roberts and I'm putting aside her attorneys.
MR. SCAROLA: Attorneys.
MR. SIMPSON: Attorneys.
MR. SCAROLA: Attorneys.
MR. SIMPSON: Yes.
MR. SCAROLA: Not just Virginia Roberts'
attorneys, but any attorney sharing a common
interest privilege?
MR. SIMPSON: No. No.
MR. SCAROLA: Okay. Well I'm not going to
let him --
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. Let me is ask this: As of December 30th,
2014, were there any attorneys who were sharing a common
interest privilege with you as counsel in the CVRA case?
Had you entered into an agreement with any other
attorney? You have co-counsel, Mr. Edwards.
MS. McCAWLEY: Well, to the extent that's
going to reveal privileged information about
accountant interest agreement, I am not going to
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let him do that.
MR. SIMPSON: That certainly is not
privileged. That's fact.
THE WITNESS: I think this is a -- I would be
happy to answer the question, but this is a very
complicated issue that -- that I think I should
confer with -- I don't want to inadvertently
waive a privilege that my client, Virginia
Roberts, has or other persons may potentially
have, so I think I would like take to short break
and confer with my counsel on that question.
MR. SIMPSON: We will take a short break.
THE VIDEOGRAPHER: We are going off the video
record, 2:13 p.m.
(Thereupon, a recess was taken.)
THE VIDEOGRAPHER: We are back on the video
record, 2:25 p.m.
MR. SCAROLA: So that the record is clear, we
have had an opportunity to consult, and we are
asserting both the attorney/client and common
interest privilege, and I can tell you that there
is no source of information outside of the
attorney/client and common interest privilege
that relates to the area of your current inquiry.
MR. SIMPSON: Well, and I'll ask the question
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and you can tell me if you'll answer this
question.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. Who, as your understanding as of December
30th of 2014, with which attorneys did you have a common
interest privilege?
A. Brad Edwards from, obviously, the law firm
that I've been working with here. Also attorneys from
the Boies Schiller law firm who were representing
Virginia Roberts at that time.
Q. Anyone else?
A. The -- at that time, on December 30th, I
don't know that it's directly responsive to your
question, but also the Scarola law firm, Mr. Scarola in
connection with litigation he was handling for Brad
Edwards.
Q. Any any other law firm lawyers that you had a
common interest privilege with?
A. No.
Q. And you're going to refuse to answer
questions about communications with Miss Roberts; is
that right?
A. Sure. Those are -- well, some -- some
communications are public, we will discuss those, I'm
sure as the deposition moves along, but certainly with
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respect to confidential communications that were part of
providing legal services to Miss Roberts, yes, I will be
asserting -- well, she's -- let me be a little more
precise.
She will be asserting attorney/client
privilege and I'm not at liberty to waive that for her.
Q. And we will make a proffer later as to
questions we would ask about your communications with
Miss Roberts as we believe those are not privileged,
but --
MR. SCOTT: As well as the others.
MR. SIMPSON: As well as the others that
have --
MR. SCOTT: Attorney/client.
MR. SIMPSON: -- attorney/client the
privilege has been asserted.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. Let me go back to the common interest group.
Is there any written agreement memorializing a common
interest agreement?
MS. McCAWLEY: I'm going to object to the
extent that it seeks details of an agreement.
You're allowed to know the existence of the
agreement; he testified to that. The details,
you're not entitled to.
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MR. SIMPSON: I'm not going to ask any
details at all.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. I'm simply going to ask: Is it in writing,
yes or no? As of December 30th, 2014, was there a
written common interest agreement, yes or no?
MR. SCAROLA: Those are two different
questions and I think the record needs to be
clear as to which one you're asking.
MR. SIMPSON: All right. Let me ask this
question.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. As of December 30th, 2014, was there any
common interest agreement that was in writing?
A. I'm not certain what date a written agreement
was executed on these subjects.
Q. At some point, was a written agreement
executed?
A. Yes.
Q. And who were the parties to the written
agreement?
A. Well, there have been addenda to the
agreement, if I recall correctly, but sitting here
today, the parties to the agreement include Virginia
Roberts, and her -- well, attorneys representing -- I
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mean -- I guess the attorneys representing Virginia
Roberts on various matters which Boies Schiller law
firm, the Bradley J. Edwards and his law firm,
University of Utah's general counsel's office, the
university -- I'm sorry -- the Utah Attorney General's
office, Attorney General Reaz ^ (ph) and other persons
there. And the Searcy -- well, Mr. Scarola's law firm,
I'm trying to remember -- sorry, Jack, I can't remember
the name of all your partners off the top of my head.
MR. SCAROLA: That's quite all right.
MR. SIMPSON: He's the man.
THE WITNESS: It's the law firm that
Mr. Scarola is a named partner in.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. And is it -- am I correct that you cannot say
one way or the other whether that written agreement was
executed before or after December 30th, 2014?
A. That's right. Sitting here right now, no, I
can't recall.
Q. Okay. I want to go back to the motion for
joinder which is Exhibit 2, and the provision -- not the
provision -- the assertion that we were referring to.
A. Right, right.
Q. Concerning not Virginia Roberts, but other
minors. Do you have that in mind?
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A. Yes.
Q. Okay. Because of the privilege instruction,
I'm going to ask it this way: As of December 30th,
2014, when you put your -- allowed your name to be put
on this pleading as --
A. I didn't allow it. I was proud to sign this
pleading.
Q. Okay. As of December 30th, 2014, when you
were proud to sign this pleading, was there any witness,
whether a victim or anyone else, who could be -- person,
whether a victim or anyone else, who could be called as
a witness who would say, I have knowledge that Alan
Dershowitz abused a minor, other than Virginia Roberts?
A. I believe with further discovery we could
have identified witnesses, yes.
Q. So is the answer to my question, no, when I
ask: As of December 30th, 2014, when you signed this,
were you aware of a single witness who would testify, I
have knowledge that Alan Dershowitz abused a minor,
other than Virginia Roberts?
MS. McCAWLEY: Objection. I just want to be
clear. Outside the context of Virginia Roberts,
what he learned through the common interest
privilege.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
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Q. I'm asking whether he was aware of I'm not
asking about -- well, let me back up.
Are you aware of any witness who could be
called who, as of December 30th, 2014, any person who
could be called as a witness who would testify, I have
knowledge that Alan Dershowitz abused a minor to support
the allegation that Alan Dershowitz abused other minors?
MR. SCAROLA: Outside of information gathered
through attorney/client or common interest
privileged communications; is that correct?
MR. SIMPSON: No. It's not correct.
MR. SCAROLA: Okay. Then, I'm not going to
permit him to answer the question to the extent
that it includes a request for information within
the attorney/client and common interest
privilege.
MR. SIMPSON: Is it your position that the
name of a person who could be called as a witness
is somehow privileged?
MR. SCAROLA: It is my position that any
information communicated within the scope of the
confidential attorney/client communication is
privileged information.
It is my position that any information
including names communicated in the scope of
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confidential common interest privilege
communications is privileged. Yes, that's my
position.
MR. SIMPSON: Okay. That, we will have to go
to the judge on.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. Let me ask you this way: As of December --
A. I'm going to write down your question because
this one sounds like it's going to be complicated.
Q. I'm going to ask it again. It's not
complicated. It's very simple. This one is going to be
very simple.
A. Okay.
Q. As of December 30th, 2014, had you spoken
personally with anyone who said, I have knowledge that
Alan Dershowitz -- I have personal knowledge that Alan
Dershowitz abused other minors?
MR. SCAROLA: To the extent that that
question calls for information conveyed within
the scope of either the attorney/client or common
interest privilege, I instruct you not to answer.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. Put aside for the moment Virginia Roberts.
I'll ask the question: Did Virginia Roberts tell you
that Alan Dershowitz abused anyone other than her?
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MR. SCAROLA: I instruct you not to answer.
MS. McCAWLEY: And I object to that.
MR. SIMPSON: Okay.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. So will you not answer that question?
MR. SCAROLA: On the basis of attorney/client
privilege, I instruct him not to answer.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. And you will follow the instruction?
A. I'm being instructed not to waive
attorney/client privileges of Virginia Roberts and I'm
going to follow that instruction, yes.
Q. To shorten the deposition --
MR. SCAROLA: I might be able to help you a
little bit. You can assume that Professor
Cassell will follow my instructions. You
don't need to ask for --
MR. SIMPSON: We are at the same place. I
was just going to say, we have an agreement that
if --
THE WITNESS: Yeah, yeah.
MR. SIMPSON: Let me just finish. If
Mr. Scarola on Ms. McCawley instructs you not to
answer, you're going to follow it?
A. That's fine. I don't want to try to run out
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the clock or anything, but let's get this moving along
so we can get your questions answered.
Q. I just need to make my record on that.
So we are going to put aside Virginia
Roberts.
A. Okay.
Q. And I'm not talking about attorneys here
talking about -- what I'm talking about is people who
could be witnesses, people who saw things, people did
things, heard things, people who have evidence that
would be admissible in court. Do you have that in mind?
A. Okay.
Q. As of December 30th, 2014, putting aside
Miss Roberts, as to whom you've refused to answer, had
anyone who fits that category of a person with personal
knowledge of admissible evidence told you that Alan
Dershowitz had abused any other minors?
MR. SCAROLA: I'm going to instruct you not
to answer that question on the basis of the
attorney/client and work product privileges.
MR. SIMPSON: The knowledge -- let me ask
this way.
MR. SCAROLA: Let me explain. It might be
helpful to you if I were to explain the basis of
my objection.
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MR. SIMPSON: Let me --
MR. SCAROLA: You are not permitted to get
indirectly what you cannot get directly, and by
phrasing the questions as you have phrased them,
you are attempting to narrow down the source of
information to an attorney/client privileged
communication.
I can't allow the witness to respond to that
question and thus disclose information that may
fall within the scope of the attorney/client
privilege or common interest privilege.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. Let me ask it -- try asking it this way: You
filed this pleading in the CVRA case; is that correct?
A. Yes.
Q. And if I understand correctly, you have
argued and the court has agreed that this is a civil
proceeding; is that right?
A. That's a very complicated question that would
require a longer answer, so I'm just tipping you off, if
you want a long answer, we can talk about that.
Q. Give me a fair answer to the question.
What's been your position and have there been rulings on
the nature of the proceeding?
A. So this requires some context here. This
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action was filed back in 2007 at a time when
Mr. Edwards, and a couple days later, I did not know
that there was a nonprosecution agreement that had been
entered into between the U.S. Government and Jeffrey
Epstein giving immunity to Epstein, four named women,
and any other potential co-conspirators for sexually
abusing minors over an extended period of time.
And Mr. Edwards and a couple days later I, we
filed -- it was a petition seeking to get access to the
nonprosecution agreement and also seeking to invalidate
that agreement, which essentially, gave immunity to at
least five and potentially, you know, many more persons
from federal prosecution for federal sex crimes.
When the pleading was filed in the District
Court, what happened I believe was that the -- you know,
it was styled as a petition and the clerk refused to set
set an emergency hearing so I think there's a
hand-scrawled notation that it's an emergency hearing.
And at that point it went into the court and
I believe the court gave it a civil caption. The
caption that we see reflected here, it's 9:08-CV-80736,
and it's a civil case. However the ultimate aim of the
action is to try to invalidate a nonprosecution
agreement and allow criminal prosecution.
Now, our position, as I understand it, and as
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we tried to articulate it over seven years is that this
action is an action that is ancillary to a contemplated
criminal prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein, four women who
were assisting him in international sex trafficking and
the other co-conspirators that would be involved.
Judge Marra, I think it's fair to say, there
are a whole series of ruling over seven years so I
wouldn't want to try to encapsulate them in just a short
statement here and I'll just take another minute or so I
think we will have this finished.
But I think he's essentially ruled that
procedural purposes, he's going to treat this case as a
civil case and has not yet had to decide whether or not
the case is actually a civil action or a criminal
action. And that has had some consequences along the
way, but we have been, I think generally, proceeding
something under the civil rules, you know, for example,
on interrogatory -- or with regard to different
procedural issues.
So to that extent, the procedural rules
covering civil actions have been what have been in play.
Q. All right. I'm going to go back to this
allegation about other minors.
A. Yes.
Q. Putting aside your communications that you
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are claiming privilege as -- as to, are you aware of any
person who, as of December 30th, 2014, had said, I have
knowledge that Professor Dershowitz abused other minors?
MR. SCAROLA: I'm sorry. I need to have that
question repeated.
(Thereupon, a portion of the record was read
by the reporter.)
MR. SCAROLA: That's fine. You can answer
that. Were there any nonprivileged
communications of that?
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. My question is -- for purposes of this
question, I'm putting aside what you're claiming is
scope of privilege. Were you aware of anyone who made
the assertion that Alan Dershowitz had abused other
minors?
A. I didn't have a named person, but I had a
pool of persons that I understood would be potentially
available to provide that kind of information.
Q. So the answer to the question is, no, you did
not have a person who had said to you that Alan
Dershowitz abused other minors?
A. I think that is slightly different than what
I just said. I didn't have a named person. I had a
pool of people in mind, the names of whom I didn't, you
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know, know every single one of them, but I had a pool of
persons in mind that I thought could provide that
information.
Q. So at the time you filed the pleading, you
didn't have the name of any other minor in mind; is that
right?
A. No -- well, I had, you know, I had for
example 23 names, 24 names in the West Palm Beach Police
Department report as potential persons that could
provide that information. I also had in mind a broader
pool of people, again, some of whom had been identified
by FBI, some of whom had not been identified as
potentially providing that information.
Q. When you say these people have been
identified as potentially providing this information,
what do you mean?
A. What I mean is that, as indicated in the
pleading, it was my understanding on December 30th, that
Mr. Dershowitz had not only abused Virginia Roberts, but
had abused other underage minors and that if we could
figure out the names of those girls, we could bring them
in and have them testify and explain exactly what he had
done to them, explain the crimes he had committed to
them
And I was hopeful that this was going to be
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the first step in discovering the names of those girls,
not just for purposes of moving this prosecution along,
but if we could identify the names of some of these
other girls who had been abused we could provide help to
them, services to them.
So this was a first step in those kinds of
developments or what I hoped to be those kinds of
developments.
Q. So is it fair to say that as of December
30th, 2014, you hoped you would be able to develop
evidence showing that Alan Dershowitz had abused other
minors?
A. No. What I had hoped to find was the name of
the girl or the girl who would be willing come forward
and testify so that we could put them into the case. I
mean, let's be clear. This -- we are talking about
sexual abuse and it's not just a matter of knocking on
somebody's door and saying, hey, would you tell me how
you were sexually abused by this very powerful person
who was working with an international sex trafficking
ring to do this, just -- just right out of the blue or
call somebody up on the phone.
This is difficult and tricky business. The
Federal Government had been trying to do this for years,
and Mr. Edwards and I had been trying to do it too, so
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it's not a simple task.
But I very much recall that there were going
to be other girls who would come forward and swear under
oath that Alan Dershowitz had sexually abused them in
exactly the same way as he had sexually abused Virginia
Roberts. And that was the basis on which I filed this
pleading, along with my colleague Mr. Edwards.
MR. SIMPSON: Move to strike nonresponsive
portion of the answer.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. Let me ask you this: In your pleading, in
your motion to join, you allege that Professor
Dershowitz abused Virginia Roberts, correct?
A. Correct.
Q. How did adding "and other minors" enhance
your legal position in this case?
A. So that's -- let me just be clear before I
dive into that. It enhanced the legal position in
multiple ways, so I am going to end up giving a long
answer, I just want to tip you off, if that's what you
want, I would be happy to give the extended answer.
Q. I would like to know why you alleged "and
other minors" given what you have said about your
knowledge of the factual basis, so to speak, for that
allegation.
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A. Okay. There are going to be -- I'm going to
end up giving you nine reasons, each of which is
complicated, so I just want to -- I don't want to be
accused of filibustering or anything. I just want you
to know that you have asked a broad question that's
going to require a broad and extended answer.
Q. Answer the question.
A. Okay. Then I'm going to refer to a -- I have
a -- well, actually, I don't.
Q. Let me ask you this: Before you refer to
something --
A. Yeah.
Q. -- please give me your best recollection of
what the basis was, the factual basis that you had in
mind, if the court said to you -- let me put it this
way.
If you went to court and Judge Marra said,
Professor Cassell, what's your factual basis for this
allegation? Tell me. What would you say?
A. Right.
MS. McCAWLEY: Wait. Outside the context of
of anything that's been communicated to you.
MR. SCAROLA: Excuse me. You have asked two
different questions now and I need to understand
which question you are asking.
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The question that you posed before just now
was: What was the reason for your including
those allegations in this pleading? Now you have
asked: What is the factual basis? And that's
going back to questions that we have already
covered and we have, I think, exhausted the
ability to respond to that question outside of
privileged information.
Do you want to go back to the question about
what was your reason for including those
allegations?
MR. SIMPSON: I'll ask the question a
different way.
MR. SCAROLA: Thank you.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. Mr. Cassell, I'm going to ask you if you're
in court and Judge Marra said to you, counsel, what is
the factual basis for your allegation that Professor
Dershowitz abused other minors, what would you say? And
if you wouldn't say something because it's privileged,
then don't include it. What would you tell the judge
was your basis for this?
A. All right. So the initial basis for it
was --
MR. SCAROLA: First of all, let me object
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because Professor Cassell is not here as an
expert witness and hypotheticals are
inappropriate. You're calling for speculation on
his part and I'm not going to instruct him not to
answer, but it is an improper question.
MR. SIMPSON: I disagree, but you can answer
the question.
THE WITNESS: Right. So the factual basis
would -- we are setting aside attorney/client
communications, right?
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. I'm asking: What would you tell the judge?
A. Right. So that -- that's speculative. I
don't think I can give a fair answer at this point
because that would have involved going back to my client
and carving out what kinds of things we were going to
present to Judge Marra in light of the posture of the
case at that point.
So it's a speculative question. I would
have -- let me just, without going into any
attorney/client privileged communications, I would have
provided an ample factual basis for those allegations.
MR. SIMPSON: Move to strike as
nonresponsive.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
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Q. Let me ask this way: We have talked somewhat
about the basis for this allegation about other minors.
Putting aside information as to what you're claiming
privilege, tell me what you knew as of December 30th,
2014, that formed the factual basis for your -- for that
allegation about other minors?
MR. SCAROLA: And I'll instruct you not to
answer that question for the same reason that
when the same question was asked earlier, I
instructed you not to answer.
MR. SIMPSON: I'm -- maybe we are not being
clear, Jack. I'm asking him to put aside -- I
mean, certainly, he filed a pleading. You've
asserted privilege as to certain aspects. I'm
simply asking him, putting aside whatever you're
claiming privilege for, right, so I'm not asking
you right now to tell me anything you're claiming
as privilege.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. Tell me whatever is not privileged that
supports that allegation.
A. Okay. The privileged information obviously
you're asking me not to reveal at this point.
Q. I'm asking you to tell me the nonprivileged
information -- and I'm not agreeing with your privilege
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assertion --
A. Sure.
Q. -- but purpose of this question --
A. For purposes of this question.
Q. -- I'm accepting it.
Putting aside what you claim is privileged, I
want to know everything that's the factual basis for
including the allegation about other minors.
A. Okay. The privileged information which I'm
not disclosing in any way would have interacted with a
vast body of other information. The vast body of other
information would have started with an 89-page police
report from the Palm Beach Police Department that showed
for about a six-month period in 2005, there was sexual
abuse of minor girls going on on a daily basis, in --
whenever Jeffrey Epstein was in his Palm Beach mansion.
And on some cases, it was going on, not once,
not twice, but three times during the day. That -- let
me just be clear. I mean, I referred to the 89-page
police report. I have offered to put it into the record
if it would speed things up.
Let's just talk about some of the things that
are in that 89-page police report. This was a very
intensive investigation that the Palm Beach Police
Department put together. They did, for example, what
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are called trash covers; that is when trash came out of
the mansion of Epstein, the police would intercept the
trash and then they would go through the trash and look
for incriminating information.
And what they began to discover was memo
pads -- and I say memo pads, let's be clear. Pad after
pad after pad or I guess I should say, sheet after sheet
after sheet, that had the name of a girl. And then
there was the notation of something to the effect of a
massage. And so the Palm Beach Police Department began
tracking down -- wait a minute, these are girls giving
massages and they don't seem to have any specialized
training in massages; they don't seem to be masseuses in
any sense of the term; what's going on here?
And so the Palm Beach Police Department
began, you know, I guess what we would call
knock-and-talks, knocking on doors to try to get to some
of these girls, and they would get to the girls and many
of them initially were -- were afraid to explain what
had happened.
But as they as they continued talking to
them, the girls began to explain that what was happening
was, they were going over to Epstein's house under the
guise of giving a massage, and when they got there, the
massage was, in fact, sexual activity. And for many of
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the girls, as I said around 23, 24 something along those
lines, they were underage; they were under the age of
consent in Florida.
And so each and every one of those events was
a crime being perpetrated -- and let's be clear, not
just being perpetrated by Epstein, but by other people
who were involved there at the mansion.
And so what the Palm Beach Police Department
was putting together was that this mansion in Florida
was the next of sexual abuse of young girls here in
Florida that involved literally, in this period of time,
more than a hundred events that they were able to
document of sexual abuse. When you put that together
with the pattern or practice that was being revealed
there, there were hundreds of acts of sexual abuse going
on in the mansion.
But then what becomes -- and in this is where
I indicated the answer would continue on -- the problem
was that the evidence was starting to show that this was
a much broader series of events. For example, there
were flight logs showing that Mr. Epstein was then
flying with underaged girls and those flight logs, you
know, as the flight logs began to develop, for example,
we have seen -- I know in the last day or two here, one
underage girl was Virginia Roberts who is on the flight,
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you know, with Epstein, and with Maxwell, and those
sorts of things.
So you start to look at the flight logs and
you see what's going on is not just events that are
occurring in Florida, but it's occurring on a multi
state basis which now starts to make it a federal crime.
For example, we are seeing evidence that -- let's just
talk about Virginia Roberts since she's central to this
case.
We are seeing Virginia Roberts being flown
from Florida to New York where she's in the clutches of
Jeffrey Epstein who is sexually abusing her, you know,
many times a week. And not just Jeffrey Epstein, but
other powerful persons, for example, Ghislane Maxwell is
there with him on all of these flights and apparently
being involved in the abuse.
Indeed -- and so you have you have -- you
have -- you have that. You also start to see on the
flight logs, what to my mind are some very sinister
things, suggesting that the pattern is not just confined
to sort of, you know, the girls that are there in
Florida, but it is extending more broadly.
Like one to my mind sinister and scary things
on the flight logs is we see, you know, Virginia Roberts
who we know has been sexually abused and we see Jeffrey
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Epstein and then we see on the flight logs one female,
that's kind of an odd notation for a flight log because,
you know, typically, I understand flight logs, the
purpose is, well, if something happens with the flight,
or there's some question about who was on and you want
to know who the person was who was on the flight.
So, to my mind, when I started to see on
these flight logs entries like one female, I view that
as a potential device for obscuring the fact that there
was interstate trafficking of underage girls for
purposes of sexual activity. Serious federal offenses.
But then the evidence extended, you know,
more broadly than that. The evidence also started to
show again if we talk just about flight logs, that
the -- that underage girls such as Virginia Roberts were
being flown internationally from, for example, Teterboro
in New York to locations just to pick one, for example,
in London, where again sexual abuse was occurring.
And so you started to put together this
pattern of criminality that was started in this, you
know, I don't know what the right word is here, I don't
know -- I don't want to -- you know, you've heard
discussions of hyperbole and things like that, but we
have got this nest of, I won't say snakes, but we have
this nest of criminals in Florida, but it seems to be
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spreading to Epstein's mansion in New York, it seems to
be spreading to Ghislane Maxwell's flat in London,
and -- and it goes on.
So those are the kinds of things that would
have formed the -- the -- the basis. Particularly when
you start to add in this fact, what the Palm -- going
back now to Florida with the Palm Beach Police
Department, the Palm Beach Police Department had
discovered, was a not one-off kind of event, one
particular day, one particular girl had been sexually
abused. What the Palm Beach Police Department had
discovered was brazen, notorious, repetitive activity
sometimes occurring as often as three times in a
particular day. And so that led me to believe that the
sexual activity that was going on in Florida was such
that someone who was a regular house guest there would
have immediately come to the conclusion that, well,
look, gee, there are these underage girls coming in here
and they seem to be -- you know, they don't seem to be
here to be doing business activities, they might be here
doing other kinds of activity. So those would be the
kinds of things that would -- would have formed the
factual basis.
There are other things as well, but I'm sure
you want to ask other questions in addition to that. So
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I'll stop there, but those -- that's -- I think gives
you a small flavor of the kind of evidence that, you
know, was undergirding the allegations that were being
presented here.
Q. It sounds like you quite passionately believe
that there was strong evidence that Mr. Epstein had
engaged in sexual misconduct; is that right?
A. I think "strong" understates it.
Q. In the course of that long answer, you didn't
mention Professor Dershowitz's name once.
A. I said flight logs. Let's talk about flight
logs.
Q. Let me back up. You didn't answer his
name -- mention his name once; is that your recollection
as well?
A. That's correct. We were talking about a
factual basis and I'll be glad -- I told you that there
were other things if you want, factual basis for
Mr. Dershowitz, I'll be glad to add that in. Let me --
I would like to supplement my answer then if I could.
Q. Do you want to look at a document?
A. Yes.
Q. Let me first -- have we exhausted your
recollection without documents of all the evidence that
you would refer to to support the allegation that
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Professor Dershowitz abused other minors?
A. No.
MR. SCAROLA: And let me say that you have a
right to refer to whatever documents you choose
to refer to, to be sure that you give a complete
response to the question that has been asked, as
long as you understand that whatever you refer to
is going to be available to the other side and we
would be happy to make it available to you.
MR. SIMPSON: And I'll give you an
opportunity to look at that --
THE WITNESS: Sure --
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. -- but I'm entitled to ask first about your
recollection.
A. Okay.
Q. Based on your recollection, I want to know
all the evidence you're relying on here?
A. Right. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to
make a list here on my notepad of all the things and
then I'm going to compare that with notes I have here.
There may be couple things I don't cover.
Q. As long as your counsel is okay with that?
A. Yeah.
Q. You understand you'll have to give that to
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me?
A. Yeah, I'll give you the notes and then I will
compare with what I've got there.
Q. All right.
A. So I mentioned the Palm Beach Police
Department report. The next thing that I want to
mention is the Jane Doe 102 complaint. In August of
2009, Bob Josefsburg, who is from what I understood a
very well-regarded lawyer here in Florida; in fact, a
lawyer that was selected by the United States Government
to represent a number of the girls that had been
sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein. He was part of the
procedure that was including the nonprosecution
agreement.
In August of 2009 he filed a complaint on
behalf of Virginia Roberts. That complaint indicated
that Virginia Roberts had been sexually abused in
Florida, in New York, and in other places as I recall.
The thing that I particularly recall was that
Mr. Josefsburg had said Virginia Roberts was abused
by -- he gave some categories of people.
He mentioned, I think, business people, he
mentioned royalty, and he mentioned academicians. And
so to tie into your question, I knew that Professor
Dershowitz was an academician, and so what I was seeing
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now was, that according to a very, very respected
attorney here in Florida, he had found Virginia Roberts
to be credible. And had filed a lawsuit against
Mr. Epstein saying that she had been trafficked,
sexually trafficked, you know, not just abused by
Mr. Epstein, but now being forcibly sent to, you know,
other people to abuse. And in the categories of people
that were sexually abusing her were academicians and I
knew that Mr. Dershowitz fell within that category of
being an academician.
That complaint also indicated that there
might be flight logs that would show that Virginia
Roberts had been sexually abused in these various
locations. And that started to indicate to me that
there might be what the law refers to as a common scheme
or plan. And that just as Virginia Roberts was being
trafficked to these powerful people in various places,
there might well be other girls.
And so I have mentioned a flight log and you
wanted to talk about Mr. Dershowitz. On December 30th,
2009, I was aware that there was a flight log showing
Mr. Dershowitz flying with Tatiana (indicating), who as
far as I can tell was not a business person, was not
providing financial advice or something else.
I understood that Mr. Epstein was a
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billionaire who was heavily involved in financial
issues. I knew that Tatiana was on plane with
Mr. Dershowitz and then there was also, if I recall
correctly working from memory as you were wondering
about, there was a notation that Mr. Dershowitz was on a
plane with one female.
And so I was -- when I looked at that, I'm
seeing Mr. Dershowitz on a flight with a women who
doesn't seem to be there for, frankly, anything other
than sexual purposes or something along those lines with
Mr. Epstein, with Mr. Epstein, who is a sex trafficker,
and with one female which seemed to me to be a
potentially entry for disguising international sex
trafficking. So that was of concern.
I then began to look at, well, I wonder, how
would I find out if Mr. Dershowitz had been abusing
other girls? Let's see, I knew that Virginia Roberts
had been forced to -- to -- to do this sort of thing...
MS. McCAWLEY: You're okay as long as
you're -- if you're revealing something in an
affidavit, that she submitted, you're fine.
THE WITNESS: Right. So -- so what... let's
see. At this point --
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. Do you want the question back?
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A. No, I'm just trying to remember what I was
thinking about with -- with regard to --
MR. SCAROLA: Do you need the response read
back up to the point --
THE WITNESS: If you would do that.
MR. SCAROLA: -- about privilege. Just read
the last couple of sentences back or the last two
sentences.
THE WITNESS: Oh, I'm sorry, now I remember
exactly.
How would we go find out whether Mr. Epstein
was lending women, or in this case, underage
girls to Mr. Dershowitz for sexual purposes?
Well, the first thing I want to do was ask -- I
will ask go Jeffrey Epstein.
And so what I discovered when I started to
look at the transcripts, there were a number of
transcripts where Mr. Epstein was asked about
Alan Dershowitz. And rather than say, well, no,
he wasn't involved in any of these illegal
activities, Jeffrey Epstein took the Fifth as the
phrase, you know, to be more precise, he
exercised his right against compelled
self-incrimination and refused to answer the
question, which since these were civil cases
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indicated to me, since he was being represented
by very experienced legal counsel, that there was
more than an insignificant risk of incriminating
himself if he answered that.
And so Jeffrey Epstein now had taken the
Fifth. And one of the things that I was aware of
having been involved in, you know, civil
litigation and criminal litigation in other
cases, once somebody refuses to answer a question
like, you know: Do you know Mr. Dershowitz, and
they take the Fifth on that, that you're then
entitled to draw what's called an adverse
inference. You can infer that, well, if they
answered that question --
MR. SCAROLA: Excuse me.
MS. McCAWLEY: Yeah, I want to make an
objection here --
MR. SCAROLA: Pardon me. Could you please
try to control your client who keeps jumping up
and down and distracting everybody in the room?
MS. McCAWLEY: Yeah, and there was also
profanity used earlier. I mean, we just have to
settle down on this side, take a deep breath, and
let him answer his questions.
MR. SIMPSON: Look, I mean, the same thing
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was happening on the other side.
MR. SCAROLA: No, sir. No, no, no. There
was never anyone who jumped to their feet at any
time during the course of the last two days. The
only person who keeps jumping up is Alan
Dershowitz. Have him pass you a note quietly if
you would, please.
MR. SIMPSON: I will disagree with your
characterization, but let me say the
argumentation --
MR. SCAROLA: Are you making the
representation --
MR. SIMPSON: No, I'm not.
MR. SCAROLA: -- that somebody on this side
of the room jumped up?
MR. SIMPSON: No, no, no, I'm not.
MR. SCAROLA: Okay. Thank you. I appreciate
that.
MR. SIMPSON: And I --
MR. SCAROLA: And you do acknowledge that
Mr. Dershowitz has repeatedly been jumping up in
the middle of testimony, correct?
MR. SIMPSON: That's -- he just got up and
came over to me, that's the only time I'm aware
of because I'm looking at the witness, but he did
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just do that, and I will pass notes. We won't
get up.
MR. SCAROLA: Okay. Well, I will -- I will
for the record, as an officer of the court,
represent that there have been multiple times
during the course of Professor Cassell's
deposition when Alan Dershowitz has jumped up in
the middle of the testimony and excitedly
whispered in your ear.
You may not have realized it because you were
focusing on the witness, but everybody on this
side of the room has been distracted by his
unprofessional conduct.
MR. SIMPSON: I'm not going to argue with
you.
MR. SCAROLA: Thank you.
MR. SIMPSON: I disagree with that
characterization. There is another attorney
sitting between us. We will pass notes.
MR. SCAROLA: Thank you.
MR. SIMPSON: And I believe, Ms. McCawley,
were you instructing not to answer or what was
happening? What did you -- what were you
raising?
MS. McCAWLEY: No. There was a lot of
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yelling going on here, so I was trying to make
sure that everybody was quiet so that the client
could answer.
MR. SIMPSON: All right. Let me back up.
Professor Cassell, I think you were in the middle
of an answer?
THE WITNESS: Yeah, I was.
MR. SIMPSON: Could the court reporter read
me the last two lines of your answer?
(Thereupon, a portion of the record was read
by the reporter.)
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. Can you pick up then?
A. Sure. I'll pick up the ans -- so I was
beginning to draw an adverse inference when Jeffrey
Epstein, who is at the heart of the sexual abuse of not
only Virginia Roberts, but dozens and dozens and dozens
of girls literally scattered across the globe, takes the
Fifth, refuses to answer the question.
Off the top of my head, I can't recall
exactly, but something along lines of: Do you know Alan
Dershowitz? And he says, I take the Fifth. That sort
of, frankly, startled me, that this international sex
trafficker was taking the Fifth now when asked about
Mr. Dershowitz.
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And so I was stymied in trying to get
information from Mr. Epstein at that point. I think
there were two depositions, if I recall correctly off
the top of my head, that I had an opportunity to review
in which he took the 5th when asked questions about
Dershowitz.
So at that point in trying to figure out, you
know, whether Mr. Dershowitz was involved in sexually
abusing not only Virginia Roberts, but in other girls,
then you go down to the next level, next layer of the
criminal conspiracy. Epstein is at the top, so you go
to the next layer. These are, you know, basically the
women who, from what I could gather, were older than the
age that Epstein wanted to sexually abuse. I think
these were 22, 23-year-old girls, so they had, you know,
essentially aged out of being his sexual abuse victims,
but they continued to -- what they would do is collect
girls for him under the age of 18, that I guess was in
his target range.
And so what -- so the next person I wanted to
talk to, you know, and get information from was Sarah
Kellen. Sarah Kellen is on a lot of these flight logs
with, you know, these girls that -- or women and with
Epstein and others, and so I wanted to talk to Sarah
Kellen.
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But what I discovered there was that when
Sarah Kellen was asked about Alan Dershowitz, she took
the Fifth and she wasn't the only one. There was
Miss Mucinska who also took the Fifth when asked
questions about Alan Dershowitz.
And then there was Marcin -- Miss Marcinkova
who also took the Fifth. So what we -- what I had at
this point was Jeffrey Epstein's international sex
trafficking organization. I had the next echelon and
both the top kingpin of the sex trafficking organization
and the next echelon had taken the Fifth, had refused to
answer questions about Alan Dershowitz.
And so at that point, I was drawing an
adverse inference, not just from one person, but from
four persons and that adverse inference was being
strengthened by the surrounding circumstances, some of
which we have already talked about.
One of the things that really bolstered the
adverse inference that I was drawing in this case was
that I've mentioned those three girls, Kellen, Mucinska,
and Marcinkova, they were all covered by a
nonprosecution agreement. And the nonprosecution
agreement was highly unusual.
I had been a federal prosecutor for about
four years, I had been a federal judge for about
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five-and-a-half years, so I had seen a lot of, you know,
nonprosecution types of arrangements. And one of the
things that was very unusual in this one is, it has what
I'll refer to as the blank check immunity provision.
There was a provision in the nonprosecution
agreement that said, this agreement will prevent federal
prosecution for international and interstate sex
trafficking, not only of Jeffrey Epstein, and not only
of the four women who were identified, but -- and this
is a direct quote: Any other potential co-conspirator,
close quote. And so that was unusual because what it --
what it seemed to be doing was somehow this agreement
was quite out of the normal and had been designed to
extend immunity to other people that might have been
associated with Epstein.
And I knew that that category included the
people that were involved in negotiating this highly
unusual provision included Mr. Dershowitz who had been
heavily involved, not only in the drafting of the
agreement, but had also been involved remarkably in
attacking the credibility of these girls and saying
things like, you know, it was -- Epstein wasn't
targeting minor girls, which just struck -- you know, I
was -- I don't want to use a technical term,
gob-smocked, that a defense attorney with an obligation
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to tell the truth was making a factual representation
that Jeffrey Epstein was not targeting minor girls, when
the Palm Beach Police Department had collected, you
know, 23 of them that had all given essentially
interlocking stories about how they had all gone over
this house, you know, the mansion, to give a massage and
when they had gotten, there they had been sexually
abused.
So the kingpin wouldn't talk. The next
echelon of the trafficking organization wouldn't talk.
So the next step was to say, okay, let's see if we can
find somebody, you know, lower level in there, you know,
a household employee or something like that, maybe they
will have some information about, you know, what this
criminal organization is doing.
Now, let's understand, you know, given the
pervasiveness of the criminal activity, I wasn't
convinced that they were going to be able to get in
there and start saying exactly what was going on because
they might well be exposing themselves to criminal, you
know, criminal culpability.
But I was able to read a sworn deposition
from Juan Alessi and Juan Alessi, I don't know, maybe
just to speed things up today, I won't go through all
the things that are said there, but Alessi puts
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Mr. Dershowitz at the nest of this international sex
trafficking organization, let's see, I think he said
four or five times a year, two or three -- you know, two
or three days when he goes there.
And let's be clear, I know Mr. Dershowitz,
had said at some point like, I'm an attorney, that's my
client. So Alessi said, no, but this was not in a
lawyer/client capacity, this is in a friend capacity.
So now we have Alessi putting him there at
the same time when young girls were there. And one of
the things that I picked up -- so is Alessi, is he able
to figure out how these girls are? A photograph of
Virginia Roberts is shown to Juan Alessi in the
deposition, and he I.D.s the photograph as, you know,
V.R., so he had put two and two together.
So now I've got V.R. coming to the house at a
time when Mr. Dershowitz is also in the house, and
apparently spending, you know, two to three nights there
and doing this four or five times a year.
Now, Alessi wasn't the only one. There was
Alfredo Rodriguez who was there about 2004 to 2005,
after the time period of Virginia Roberts, but it's part
of the common scheme or plan that we've been discussing
here.
And so in 2005, Alfredo Rodriguez says, yeah,
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again, Mr. Dershowitz is there at a time when these
massages are going on, and when you start to look at
Alessi and Rodriguez's statements in context where they
are saying, he's there at the same time of the massages
are occurring, and with the West Palm Beach Police
Department reports showing that massages are of a sexual
nature, again, it started to put two and two together.
One of the things that was particularly
important about Rodriguez's situation was that Rodriguez
had an access to what's been called the little black
book. I think he referred to it as the holy grail.
This was Jeffrey Epstein's, you know, telephone book
where he had telephone numbers in it. And so Rodriguez
had that and, you know, I guess thought that this was
would be worth a lot of money because it would -- it
would identify all of the people that have been sexually
abused by Jeffrey Epstein. And so he tried to sell it,
the FBI busted him for that. And when the FBI busted
him, now he's got this book. And so the book went to
Alessi and according to a later FBI report, Alessi
identified information that was pertinent to the FBI's
investigation.
And so when I look at the little black book
that I have seen copies of, there are a handful of names
in that black book that have been circled, apparently by
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Mr. Rodriguez, and one of the names that's -- that --
that has been circled is Alan Dershowitz. And so that,
to me, was suggesting that Mr. Rodriguez had identified
Alan Dershowitz as somebody who had information about
this international sex trafficking ring.
Just as a side note, but an important note,
the thing that was circled on the Alan Dershowitz page
was not a single phone number indicating somebody
Epstein had bumped -- you know, Epstein had bumped into
at one point.
I believe there were 10 or 11 phone numbers
that were associated with Mr. Dershowitz that had all
been circled and an e-mail address as well. So that
started to corroborate my sense that Mr. Dershowitz was,
indeed, a very close friend of Jeffrey Epstein.
Now, I had then continued to do -- there's
been reference today to using Google to do research and
so forth, so I Googled Jeffrey Epstein and one of the
things that pops up rather rapidly is an article in
Vanity Fair and what you see in that article is, you
know, discussion about Mr. Epstein, but when you're
trying to do a profile of someone, you try to figure out
who that person's closest friends are.
And so the Vanity Fair author had gone to
Alan Dershowitz, you know, our Mr. Dershowitz here, and
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had asked him, hey, what do you know about Jeffrey
Epstein? And, again, off the top of my head, you want
to know what I can remember right now.
What I can remember right now is that in the
Vanity Fair article, the -- in the Vanity Fair article,
Mr. Dershowitz said, I've written 20-some odd books.
There's only one person outside my immediate family with
whom I share drafts and that's Jeffrey Epstein.
So I took that as indicating a very close
personal association that, you know, among the people
that obviously he's sharing these kinds of things that
he wants evaluated before he shares them with the
broader world. There's his immediate family and then
there's Jeffrey Epstein.
There was also another similar quote in the
article that indicated that -- that Mr. Dershowitz said
that he wasn't interested in Epstein just because he has
a lot of money. I mean, Epstein was identified as a
billionaire -- billionaire with a B, so the record is
clear.
But he said, look, if Epstein wants all his
money, and I'm paraphrasing here, I will be happy to
walk down, you know, the Coney Island Boardwalk with him
and discuss things with him, even if he didn't have any
money.
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So now I'm seeing Dershowitz is a very close
personal friend of Jeffrey Epstein. And then I started
to look at flight logs. There were some very
interesting things that I noticed on the flight logs.
One of the things I noticed was when I began
to, you know, get into this, that you know, I was
wondering, well, how do these flight logs come into the
possession of, you know, law enforcement agencies? And
the answer turned out to be that they had been provided
by Epstein's defense attorney and, you know,
coincidentally I suppose, or in my mind suspiciously,
they were not provided by just any defense attorney on
this rather large defense team.
They were provided by one attorney according
to Detective Riccari ^ (ph). Detective Riccari
testified under oath that the flight logs were provided
to him by Alan Dershowitz.
So one of the things that was interesting
was, Dershowitz has had access to these flight logs and
now I'm beginning to wonder, well, has there been an
opportunity to sanitize those flight logs or remove any
incriminating information?
And one of the things that was interesting
about the flight logs that were produced, I believe,
just so the record is clear, that was Exhibit 1 that --
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if I could refer -- I need to refresh my recollection --
well, you may not want me to look at a document.
It was either Exhibit 1 or 2 this morning
during Dershowitz's deposition which was covering a time
period of January to, I believe, September 2005. These
were flight logs that were produced by Mr. Dershowitz to
the Palm Beach Police Department.
When you wonder why did they stop in
September, you know, why stop in September 2005? What's
the significance of that? Well, later on, additional
flight logs were obtained, and sure enough, who shows up
on an October 2005 flight log with Jeffrey Epstein?
Mr. Dershowitz.
So that led to a suspicion that
Mr. Dershowitz had provided to the Palm Beach Police
Department flight logs that, the time period of which
for the production had been carefully crafted to keep
him out of it; in other words, to not produce the
October 2005 version.
The other thing I began to discover is, I
started going through some flight logs. Dave Rogers,
who is one of I think about three pilots that Epstein
regularly relied on to fly his -- he had very fancy --
to use the technical term -- jets. There were about
three pilots there.
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One of them had some flight logs and that was
the pilot, Dave Rogers, if I'm recalling his name
correctly. And so later on in the litigation, the sex
abuse litigation against Epstein, flight logs were
obtained from Dave Rogers and it was possible to -- to
compare -- I'm sorry, I don't mean to -- I want to make
sure I get -- you know, the question is how much can I
remember and I'm trying to make sure I get it all in.
And so the flight logs were produced from
Dave Rogers. And so Dave Rogers produced some flight
logs and some of the flights that he produced logs for
coincided with the logs that Mr. Dershowitz had provided
to Palm Beach Police Department and there were
inconsistencies.
And so that again aroused my suspicion that
maybe Mr. Dershowitz when he had --
MR. SCOTT: I just got a call from a lawyer
on the screen. His phone is not working,
Epstein's lawyer, Darrin Indyke. Do you want to
take a break for a second?
MR. SIMPSON: Why don't we let him finish his
answer.
MR. SCAROLA: Finish the answer.
MR. SCOTT: You're right.
MR. SCAROLA: Although it may take a while.
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THE WITNESS: It's, I mean, the question --
MR. SCAROLA: Yeah. But let's --
MR. SCOTT: I don't care.
MR. SCAROLA: Let's go ahead and finish.
MR. SCOTT: Let's go ahead and finish the
answer. We heard this much. I don't want to
break him on a roll.
MR. SCAROLA: Thanks.
THE WITNESS: Right. I mean, I want to
make -- I want to make clear that there was a lot
of information that I was relying on in filing
this pleading, and of course, the later pleading.
So we are on the subject of flight logs.
Flight logs showed that the flight logs that
Mr. Dershowitz had produced to Detective Riccari
were incomplete and inaccurate. And so that led
to concern on my part that Mr. Dershowitz had had
an opportunity to sanitize the flight logs, had
provided incomplete production, you know,
obviously, very important production that the
Palm Beach Police Department was looking at.
Then we got some additional flight logs from
Dave Rogers. What those flight logs showed --
first off, let's talk again about the production
of those flight logs.
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My recollection is that Dave Rogers's flight
logs were provided by Bruce Rinehart ^ (ph) who
is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney who had been
inside the Southern District of Florida office at
a time when the Epstein case was the subject of
regular discussion in that office.
And then he had gone to work for some kind of
a law firm or private operation that was located
adjacent to Mr. Epstein's business. And so, now,
Rinehart, who appeared to be being paid by
Mr. Epstein and certainly was adjacent to
Mr. Epstein's business office, was producing
these flight logs. So that, again, aroused
suspicion that the flight logs that were being
produced would have been sanitized or inaccurate.
But even -- I mean, I think the problem with,
you know, you can't sanitize everything, that
would be too suspicious. And so what was -- what
was evident on these flight logs was, for
example, approximately ten flights by
Mr. Dershowitz with Tatiana has been discussed,
with Maxwell, with Jeffrey Epstein. One of them
had one female, which again in the context that I
was looking at, seemed to be a potential code
word for underage, underage girl.
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And so those flight logs showed, you know,
again, close association and travel with --
with -- with Mr. Dershowitz, and Mr. Epstein.
Another thing that I had, and I will not reveal
any privileged communications here or any
confidential information, but on December 30th, I
was aware that one of the preeminent lawyers in
the United States, David Boies, had agreed to
represent Virginia Roberts and given the vast
amounts of business that tries to get in the
door --
MR. SIMPSON: Could I interrupt? I think we
are going towards a waiver here.
MS. McCAWLEY: Yeah.
MR. SIMPSON: We can't have testimony
about -- this is one most respected people in the
country or lawyers in the country and then you
won't answer the questions.
THE WITNESS: Okay.
MR. SIMPSON: You said not to answer.
MS. McCAWLEY: Well, describing David Boies
in general doesn't constitute waiver.
MR. SIMPSON: I agree with the description;
he's a distinguished lawyer.
MR. SCAROLA: And I don't think we are
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getting beyond anything that is a matter of
public record.
MR. SIMPSON: I just --
MS. McCAWLEY: But I appreciate you letting
me know that.
THE WITNESS: All right. I will not waive
anything, and if I start to do that, I would
certainly request the opportunity to retract what
I'm doing, but I was aware, since the issue is,
well, what's in the public record, I was aware
that, you know, probably the most significant
United States Supreme Court case argued in the
last 20 years was Bush versus Gore, which was a
case that essentially determined who was going to
be President of the most powerful country in the
world.
There were two attorneys who argued that case
in front of the United States Supreme Court and
arguing for the Democratic Presidential
Candidate, Al Gore, was David Boies. He had put
his credibility on the line in arguing the Bush
versus Gore case, and without going into any
confidential communications or trying to waive in
any way, I knew that David Boies had agreed to
represent Virginia Roberts which gave me
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additional confidence in the fact that I was also
representing this young woman in her effort to
bring sex traffickers to justice, and those who
had sexually abused her to justice.
And so those are things that come to mind
immediately as -- let me just take a second and
see if there were other things regarding
Dershowitz that come immediately -- immediately
to mind.
Oh, one of the things was in the Jane Doe 102
complaint which alleged academicians that had --
that had abused -- sexually abused Jane Doe 3,
there -- there were -- so that raises a question,
obviously, of who were the academicians that Bob
Josefsburg had identified.
I can't recall, actually, the record should
be clear, I can't recall immediately whether it
was singular or plural. It may have been plural,
but if it's singular, I don't want to suggest
that there were other academicians, but at least
one academician had sexually abused Jane Doe 3
according to the complaint that had been filed by
Bob Joseph ^ [sic].
There were two things of interest to that:
One was that Mr. Epstein, the man that I wasn't
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able to get information from because he was
invoking the Fifth, had refused or declined to
file an answer to that complaint.
Rather than deny the allegations, he had
ultimately, it's my understanding -- I don't have
inside information and I'm not trying to waive
any information, but my understanding is that
rather than answer the complaint, he settled the
case through the payment of some kind of
compensation that Jane Doe 102 found desirable
for dropping her claim.
The other thing that I found interesting is
that Josefsburg's partner, I believe it is,
Miss Isell (indicating), had been to some of the
depositions of, for example, I believe Juan
Alessi and Alfredo Rodriguez. I believe at least
one of those, and perhaps both of those. And she
had asked questions about Alan Dershowitz in
those depositions, but had not asked questions
about other academics in those depositions.
So that led me to conclude that Bob
Josefsburg and his outstanding law firm had
identified Alan Dershowitz as someone who had
information relevant -- and let's be clear, this
is not a lawsuit about some contract dispute or
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something -- that he was someone who had
information relevant to the sexual abuse of
underage girls and, indeed, they were asking
questions about what information -- what
information he might have.
Another -- I remember now, there's a whole
other line of things that I had in mind at the
time, and I think since you want to test my
memory -- let me be clear, I'm not claiming I
have a superb memory, I have an average memory,
but this is a subject that's very important to me
and so I've worked, you know, very hard to get
all the information.
THE WITNESS: I would like to take a break.
MR. SCAROLA: Sure. Take a break.
THE VIDEOGRAPHER: We are going off video
record, 3:27 p.m.
(Thereupon, a recess was taken.)
THE VIDEOGRAPHER: We are back on the record,
3:41 p.m.
THE WITNESS: I want to continue my answer.
I'm sorry I got emotional there for a moment. I
want to do a good job for Virginia Roberts on
representing all the -- the evidence that is
available to support her.
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The next thing that I was thinking of was,
all right, then the question is, well, what does
Mr. Dershowitz have to say about all this? So I
started to look at the information on that as
well.
In 2009, there had been a deposition request
sent to Mr. Dershowitz, and I saw a document
showing that that had actually been served on
him, and you know, to the extent that what I saw
was a, I think a receipt, from the process server
or something along those lines, so I saw attempt
to contact him in 2009.
And then I saw an additional attempt to
contact him in 2011. Mr. Scarola had sent him a
note and there was, you know, some back and
forth. The one note that jumped out to me was
one in which Mr. Scarola had written to
Mr. Dershowitz, I think the phrase was, multiple
witnesses have placed you in the presence of
Jeffrey Epstein and underage girls. I would like
to depose you about those subjects.
And the answer that came back was not, well,
let me clear all of that misunderstanding up.
You know, that's frankly -- if I had gotten
something like that, that's what I would I have
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said.
The answer that came back was, from
Mr. Dershowitz, was something along the lines, if
I remember correctly, well, tell me what you --
tell me what you want to know and I'll decide
whether to cooperate, was I think the phrase that
was used. And so there was an attempt, you know,
in 2009, an attempt, a 2011 attempt to get
information from Mr. Dershowitz.
Then there was another subpoena without
deposition for documents. You know, we have
heard a lot about records in this case that could
prove innocence. There was a records request to
Mr. Dershowitz in 2013. Again, my understanding
was that there was no -- you know, no documents
were provided on that.
And so those I -- had that information.
Another bit of information that I had was that in
2011, I believe in early April, the -- this is
not attorney/client privileged information from
Virginia Roberts. This is a telephone call that
she placed from Australia where she had been
essentially forced into hiding by Jeffrey
Epstein.
She managed to escape and was hiding out in
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Australia, and she somehow, you know, Mr. Scarola
and Mr. Edwards were able to reach her and there
was a telephone call that was made. And in that
telephone call she identified Alan Dershowitz as
someone who would have relevant information about
Jeffrey Epstein and the sexual abuse of underage
girls.
And so I had that information as well. So
that is -- the question was: What could I recall
off the top of my head with regard to the factual
basis for information connecting Mr. Dershowitz
with the sexual abuse of minor girls, plural, and
that, sitting here at this moment, is the best
that I can recall for the information along those
liens.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. Was that answer --
MR. SCAROLA: Excuse me. Before -- before
you go on to another subject, Professor Cassell
is entitled to refresh his recollection to give
you a complete response. So why don't you go
ahead and do that now. Make sure you've covered
everything.
MR. SIMPSON: I'm -- I think I get to ask the
questions, but I was going to ask the same
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question.
MR. SCAROLA: Wonderful. We are on the same
page.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. Mr. Cassell, you mentioned that you had
something that you had prepared --
A. Yes.
Q. -- that would summarize --
A. Right.
Q. -- your knowledge.
A. Right.
Q. And now that you have exhausted your
recollection, could you produce that and let's just mark
it as an exhibit?
A. Sure.
MR. SIMPSON: We are up to Exhibit 3, I
believe. Cassell 3?
THE WITNESS: Right. Now, there are two
parts to this --
MR. SIMPSON: Can we mark it first?
THE WITNESS: Yeah. I just want the record
to be clear, there's a pre-December 30th section
and a post-December 30th section, so the top part
is the what I was working off of.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
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Q. Okay.
A. Now, underneath this is the, you know, if you
have questions about what happened after December 30th.
Q. So you're -- you're prepared to produce the
entire document, but you're clarifying? I don't want to
ask you. If you're going to use it in your testimony
then we will mark the whole thing?
MR. SCAROLA: Mark the whole thing. You can
use it.
MR. SIMPSON: Mark the whole thing and I'll
ask you about it.
THE WITNESS: Absolutely.
MR. SIMPSON: I'm going to ask the court
reporter to mark as Cassell Exhibit 3, a one-page
document that the witness has just handed to me.
It's mostly typed, it has some handwriting on it.
(^ Plaintiff's ^ Defendant's I.D. Exhibit
No. 3 - one-page note of witness was marked for
identification.)
THE WITNESS: All right. So let me -- if I
could look at this to see if the top portion of
to see if it refreshes my recollection about --
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. Could I just see it for one second?
A. Absolutely.
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Q. All right. Let me just clarify one point
before you do that?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. In your answer, were you referring to the
evidence you could recall or the information you could
recall that supported your allegations as to both
Virginia Roberts and other minors or were you treating
those separately?
A. No, I was not treating those separately. I
was -- for me, there's a common -- what the law refers
to as a common scheme or plan in a criminal conspiracy
for international trafficking that involved not just a
single girl, but multiple girls, so the answer was --
was with respect to multiple girls.
Q. Okay. So I may have some questions to
distinguish further between those two --
A. Yes.
Q. -- but is it fair to say that -- and I
realize you're going refresh your recollection, but that
you had exhausted your recollection of the basis for the
allegation in this Exhibit 2, the motion to join as to
both Miss Roberts and other minors?
A. Yes.
Q. Okay. So then now take a look at that and
tell me if there's anything there that refreshes your
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recollection as to something that you have not yet told
me about.
A. So -- and this refreshes my recollection.
Sarah Kellen, I think I refer to her as Miss Kellen.
Sarah Kellen was the first name.
Nadia Marcinkova, Nadia was the first name
there. Adrianna Mucinska was the full name of those --
that's the second echelon of the -- of the criminal
conspiracy.
Oh, this refreshes my recollection that
Jeffrey Epstein had answered some questions in the civil
litigation. He provided, for example, names of some
people who were involved, but he took the Fifth when
asked -- he took -- he provided names of some people who
would have relevant information in the civil cases. But
when asked in deposition about Mr. Dershowitz, he took
the Fifth.
So I found it significant that for some
people, he was willing to answer questions, but with
regard to Mr. Dershowitz, he took -- invoked his Fifth
Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination
presumably because revealing what he knew about
Mr. Dershowitz would, you know, cause criminal --
criminal charges potentially to be filed against him.
There was a common scheme or plan and I'll
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elaborate on that in a moment, but yeah, one of -- so
this was another point. I mentioned that there had been
three efforts to get information from Mr. Dershowitz by
way of a 2009 deposition request, a 2011 deposition
request, and further follow-up correspondence from
counsel on that, and a 2013 document request all
propounded to Mr. Dershowitz that had not gone answered.
And this was -- yeah, I'm sorry this slipped
my mind at the time -- but when we saw Mr. Dershowitz
not responding to these answers, you know, maybe the
mail didn't get delivered to him or something like that.
I suppose that's, you know, a theoretical possibility.
But the reason I ruled out that possibility,
first, it didn't seem likely; but secondly, there was a
pattern of Mr. Epstein's associates evading efforts to
get information from them. And so let me just go back
to the earliest instance of that.
According to the Chief of Police in the Palm
Beach -- of the Palm Beach Police Department,
Mr. Dershowitz had said that he would make available
Mr. Epstein for questions about the sex, you know, abuse
that was going on. And, you know, Mr. Dershowitz had
said to the Palm Beach Police Department, yeah, we will
make him available, no, we got to reschedule it, you
know, another time reschedule, another time. And so
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there were multiple -- according to the Chief of Police,
there had been multiple, you know, requests to interview
Mr. Epstein and Mr. Dershowitz had repeatedly said, oh,
yeah, we will schedule that. And then it hadn't
happened.
Now, obviously, there could have been a
situation there where an emergency had come up for
Mr. Epstein and he wasn't able to make a schedule or
something like that. But what I saw was a pattern of
offers to meet and then withdrawals and that seems to me
to be a deliberately calculated strategy to sort of
stall the investigation to say, oh, we will get you
Epstein, oh, we can't meet now. Oh, we will get it
now -- and so forth.
And one of the things that I noted from all
that was that Mr. Dershowitz, as Mr. Epstein's attorney,
never ultimately produced Epstein for a meeting with the
Palm Beach Police Department, having made another
offers -- now, obviously, something could have happened
there. I mean, I don't -- I don't know what was the
communications and so forth, but as an attorney trying
to get information and unable to do that, I had to make
some reasonable inferences.
And so one of the inferences I began to draw
was that this was a stall tactic by Mr. Dershowitz, and
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in my view potentially an unethical one, but I don't
think we need to get into that in this litigation.
What I saw was a stall tactic going on, and
the reason I think it was a stall tactic as we are
sitting here now in, what is it, October of 2015, and
Mr. Epstein has never been willing to answer questions
about his sexual abuse of these girls.
And this was back in around, what was it, I
guess it would be 2005, 2006, you know, roughly a decade
ago, Mr. Dershowitz was offering to make Epstein
available. And then that never happened and given the
ten-year pattern that -- I guess I should go back. I'm
sorry. Let me correct my answer.
We should go back to December 30th, 2014, so
there -- there appeared to be about an eight-year period
of time during which Mr. Epstein had refused to answer
any questions about his sexual abuse of girls and yet,
Mr. Dershowitz said, oh, it's just a scheduling issue
and we will get the Palm Beach Police Department to --
to -- to, you know, to meet and learn all this.
The other thing that that I'm seeing here, so
now there's -- there's -- Mr. Dershowitz had been
involved in concealing Mr. Epstein from the Palm Beach
Police Department, but there were others that had done
similar sorts of things.
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So one of them was a Ghislane Maxwell. I
will just call her Glen Maxwell. I think that's kind of
the nickname I understand she goes by.
Glen Maxwell -- remember, she is the one, you
know, I think the record is clear, in litigation that,
you know, allegation has been made that she was the one
that -- that brought Virginia Roberts into the -- into
the sex trafficking, and was heavily involved with, you
know, in all the -- not all the flights, but on many of
the flights with Jeffrey Epstein where this seemed to be
going on and was very close to Epstein, staying at the
mansion frequently.
And so she would, obviously, be I guess if
you have Epstein at the top of the -- you know, the
kingpin of the operation, Maxwell would be, you know, a
close second or certainly at the higher echelon.
So, obviously, someone who would have very
significant information about, you know, the sex
trafficking, who were the other people that -- the girls
were being trafficked to, what kind of abuse was going
on, you know, what kind of sex toys were being used to
abuse them, because I think it was in her room or
adjacent to her room that many of these devices were
located, and so she would have had very significant
information to provide.
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And so in connection with the civil cases
that some of the girls had filed against Mr. Epstein,
her deposition was set by my co-counsel, Mr. Edwards,
and there was some haggling over a confidentiality
agreement, you know, and that had all been worked out
and then she was set for a deposition and finally
agreed, you know, to deposition. And just shortly, I
think a couple of days before that deposition, she
canceled. Well, she didn't cancel, her -- her attorney
called to cancel the deposition, and represented that
Miss Maxwell was outside the United States of America
and had no plans to return back to the United States.
And so, at that point, the deposition was --
was not able to go forward. But it turned out that she
had not left the United States for an extended period of
time. She was spotted later at a wedding of a prominent
person in New York. And so that was Maxwell fitting
into this pattern, you know, Epstein was being, you
know, Palm Beach Police Department being told by
Dershowitz that Epstein will answer your questions, and
then not getting information.
Maxwell evading the deposition. Jean Luc
Brunel ^ (ph) was another person who seemed to be very
much involved in trafficking the girls and it was the
same situation. A deposition was set to try to get
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answers, you know, who is involved, which girls are
involved, what are their names, what's -- what's going
on? And so Brunel's deposition is set and then he -- he
finagles out of it, too. I don't recall exactly what
his excuse was, but, you know, evaded the deposition and
in fact, later information came to light he was hiding
out in the mansion of Epstein while he's claiming he's
unavailable for deposition.
So -- so this pattern of Mr. Dershowitz, you
know, there were three attempts to obtain information
from him, if that's all I had, I guess that would have
been one thing. But what I had was a pattern of people
who were implicated in the sex trafficking ring evading
questions, you know, quite in violation of court orders
and depositions and things -- I shouldn't say court
orders -- in violation of the deposition notices that
were being sent and agreements being made through
counsel.
And then in addition to that, I had this, so
why -- why would you think that there's this sex
trafficking, you know, ring going on? It sounds kind of
farfetched. Well, one of the things that I had
available to me on December 30th was a photograph that
was widely available on the Internet, and that
photograph depicted three people.
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It depicted Glen Maxwell, Prince Andrew and
Virginia Roberts, and at the time that it looked like
Virginia Roberts was an underage girl, she was not
dressed in formal attire. And Prince Andrew had his arm
around her, I think if memory serves, and right next --
smiling in the background is Miss Maxwell, and it
appeared that that was a private residence presumably in
London close to Buckingham Palace where Prince Andrew
lived.
So here was Prince Andrew with this underage
girl with Glen Maxwell, the right-hand girl, if that's
the right expression. I probably should say -- strike
that -- right-hand woman of Mr. Epstein, that were there
and somebody had taken the photograph.
Given the surrounding circumstances, I
thought perhaps Mr. Epstein had taken the photograph.
So that would have shown Virginia Roberts's sexual abuse
was not confined just to Florida, not confined to the
New York mansion, it would have -- it would have
presumably continued into London where one of, you know,
the highest, most powerful persons in the governmental
structure that exists in England was now involved in
sexual abuse.
And so that created grave concern about, how
far did this sex trafficking ring reach, what were their
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connections, what were their abilities to influence, you
know, law enforcement agencies in those countries, in
England or law enforcement agencies in this country
through power that somebody at that level, fifth, I
think in line to the British Throne, would have, you
know, presumably access to levers of power that other
people might not -- might not have.
And so that is the -- I believe is the
information that I had available to me on December 30th
involving not just Virginia Roberts, but the entire sex
trafficking organization.
Q. Okay. And that, just to clarify again, it
exhausts and refreshed your recollection as to both the
information you were relying on as to the allegations
about Virginia Roberts and as to the allegations about
other minors; is that right?
A. Correct.
Q. So I don't have to ask you separately about
Roberts?
A. That's right. No, and I gave you a heads-up
that was going to be long answer.
Q. You made Mr. Dershowitz look like an amateur.
If I could --
MR. SCAROLA: I'm sorry. Like a what?
MR. SIMPSON: Amateur, at long answers.
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THE WITNESS: Well, I wasn't trying to -- let
me be clear. I was not trying to filibuster.
You asked me a very direct question which was, I
want to know everything that was in your memory
on December 30th, and as you can tell, this was a
very important subject to me and it's very
important to Miss Roberts and I wanted to be
comprehensive. And I gave you the opportunity
to say, let's have a narrower question, but you
wanted a broad questions. That's why I did this.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. Mr. Cassell, I apologize for attempting humor
in this intense situation.
A. This is very important to me. This is not --
this is not something that I find funny.
Q. Well, I say it's very important to
Mr. Dershowitz, Professor Dershowitz also, he was trying
to answer questions. I'm not questioning that you were
trying to answer my question and I appreciate it.
Mr. Dershowitz was trying to do the same
thing and it is a difficult situation.
A. All right.
Q. So I was not trying to make light of the
questions I'm asking you.
A. This involves sexual abuse --
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Q. I understand that.
A. -- of multiple girls.
Q. I understand that. I understand the
allegations that have been made.
A. And your side keeps attacking these girls.
That's why it's emotional for me.
Q. That part is not true, but I will ask
questions --
A. I believe that part is true. I would like to
take a break. I'm sorry.
THE VIDEOGRAPHER: We are going off the video
record, 4:01 p.m.
(Thereupon, a recess was taken.)
THE VIDEOGRAPHER: We are back on the video
record 4:04 p.m.
MR. SCAROLA: The record should reflect that
Mr. and Mrs. Dershowitz have -- are no longer
present.
MR. SIMPSON: Correct.
MR. SCAROLA: Thank you.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. Mr. Cassell, would you agree with me that
accusing someone --
MS. McCAWLEY: I'm sorry. I just realized
that she stepped out to get water. I didn't ask.
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I'm sure it's probably --
THE WITNESS: It's all right.
MR. SIMPSON: That's okay with you?
THE WITNESS: Sure.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. Would you agree with me that accusing a
person of -- an adult of engaging in sex with a minor is
a serious accusation?
A. Sure.
Q. And would you agree with me that the cause of
victims' rights is harmed and not furthered by false
allegations of sexual abuse?
A. Sure.
Q. I want to go back. I'm going to follow up on
some aspects of your answer.
A. Sure.
Q. Kind of work my way through some of those.
A. Sure.
Q. But first let me -- let me ask this: You
drew in your answer a lot of inferences based on the
facts or information you -- you recited, inferences that
Professor Dershowitz had engaged in the conduct alleged;
is that fair to say?
A. I think part of it was -- was inference, part
of were the facts. I mean, you say a lot of inferences.
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I think that would be, you know, subject to the debate
which perhaps we are going to do now.
Q. No. Let's say you drew some inferences based
on information you had; is that fair to say?
A. Sure.
Q. Okay. It's true, is it not, that you and
your co-counsel, Mr. Edwards, had decided to seek the
joinder of Miss Roberts and Jane Doe 4 as parties no
later than the Summer of 2014?
A. Jane Doe 4, I think, give or take, yeah. I
think Jane Doe -- well, that's -- there's a nomenclature
issue. Let's refer to -- how do you want to refer to
Virginia Roberts? Shall we just call her --
Q. I think we can call her Miss Roberts since
the name is now known.
A. Right. Sure.
Q. And just clarifying, we can call Jane Doe 4.
We won't use that name, Jane Doe 4.
A. Right. I think sometime in the Summer or the
Fall the decision was made to -- to approach the U.S.
Attorneys's Office to get their agreement to add her
into the case. And they declined, which ultimately led
to the filing on December 30th.
Q. Okay. And the basis for my question was, I
believe I saw in a pleading that you had represented to
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the court that you had been asking the government for
consent since, I believe it was the Summer of 2014; is
that consistent with your recollection?
A. The exact timing, you know, if I looked at
the documents, we could refresh my recollection. We put
those documents into the court record in January 21st,
2015, the correspondence that we had had. The U.S.
Attorney's Office had delayed, you know, giving us an
answer on that for as I recall, several months and
ultimately they said, no, and that's why we filed the
pleading.
Q. Okay. My question is: Why, during that
several-month period before you filed the motion itself,
did you not contact Professor Dershowitz to ask him if
this was true, and if he had any evidence to refute it?
Why not contact the person you're accusing?
A. I mean, there's a cost -- you know, again,
this is going take a little bit of an answer, not as
long as the other one.
Q. I won't cut you off.
A. No, you have been very polite. I appreciate
that. This is about a five-minute answer, just so you
got a heads-up.
Okay. So the issue of why didn't I contact
Mr. Dershowitz, it's a cost benefit situation. So what
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would be the benefit of asking him. Well, I thought the
benefit would be zero. What I thought we would get was
zero, because in 2009, an effort to depose him had been
made unsuccessful. 2011, an effort had been made to
depose him unsuccessfully. In 2013 --
MR. SIMPSON: Was there an objection on the
phone?
MR. INDYKE: No.
MR. SIMPSON: Okay. I didn't think so.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. Please continue.
A. In 2013, an effort had been made to depose
him unsuccessfully, and I mentioned a moment ago this
manner of people involved in Epstein's organization that
had been evading efforts to get information. So it
wasn't just that something hadn't been received in the
mail. It appeared to me that Dershowitz fit into a
pattern of not providing information and, indeed, he had
been party to making, supposedly, Mr. Epstein available
to the Palm Beach Police Department and then pulling --
pulling him back. And that seemed to be a stall tactic.
So I didn't think we were going get any
information. On the other hand, now we had to waive a
cost of calling Mr. Dershowitz and saying, we are
preparing to file a pleading that identifies you. And I
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don't want -- I'm not going to get into communications
that Mr. Edwards and I had, which you have asked what
was my state of mind on December 30th as to why I hadn't
called Mr. Dershowitz?
My own personal state of mind, not revealing
any attorney/client communications, but it does revolve
around Virginia Roberts. I had in front of me evidence
of an international sex trafficking organization that
was going to the Fifth in line to the Throne in England,
to very powerful people in the United States, to a
billionaire in Palm Beach, Florida, Epstein. Very
powerful people.
And what I also had was a history of
Mr. Epstein intimidating, threatening witnesses, and in
some cases, you know, potentially what seemed to be
possibly life-threatening kinds of situations. There
was a report of investigators quote, unquote, following
I think it was girls or witnesses against Mr. Epstein
and, indeed, had done so in a circumstance that
suggested the possibility that somebody had been forced
off the road.
I had been personally and directly involved
in an Epstein effort to intimidate a witness in the
Summer of 2010, which was a very disturbing incident.
The incident took place right around, I don't know, July
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2nd, July 3rd, I believe it was 2010, where a woman that
I was representing along with my colleague, Brad
Edwards, I'll refer to her by initials, if that's all
right with you.
(Phone Interruption.)
MR. SIMPSON: On the phone, could you --
THE WITNESS: Can we mute them?
MR. SIMPSON: Would you mute it, please?
MR. SCAROLA: Before the phone is muted,
could we identify who is on the phone now,
please? Who is on the phone?
MR. SIMPSON: Yeah. Who is on the phone?
MR. SWEDER: Ken Sweder.
MR. SIMPSON: Anyone else?
MR. SWEDER: Alan Dershowitz.
MR. INDYKE: Darrin Indyke.
MR. SIMPSON: Anyone else? Did you get
those? Okay.
THE WITNESS: I just need to make a note
because I kind of got distracted there. Let's
see. We had -- oh, right. Okay.
That was the other point I wanted to make.
And I've only got about another minute or
two, but the point was, I had had personal
experience on about July 2nd, I believe it was,
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2010. What had happened was, S.R. was a young
woman who had been sexually abused by Jeffrey
Epstein. She was identified in the
nonprosecution agreement as sex abuse victim, and
we had a civil suit going against Mr. Epstein and
her case was set for trial. It was going to be
the first trial against Mr. Epstein.
You know, this -- he had abused, according to
the NPA, I think 35 girls, and at that point I
think, gosh, I think 31 of them had settled, all
the girls except for the three represented by
Mr. Edwards and I had settled.
So this was going to be the first person that
was going to bring, if you will, the light of day
to this. This was going to be the first time
where this was going to be tried in open court.
So this was potentially an opportunity to, you
know, expose exactly what Epstein has done
because people are going to be called as
witnesses including Epstein and others like him.
So this was, I think, a potentially explosive
situation for Mr. Epstein because all of the --
all of the crimes that his organization had been
committing were going to be exposed during the
course of this trial. So -- but this all
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depended on S.R. being able to get to trial and
not be intimidated.
She's a very petite woman and what happened
that evening was a very large, physically large,
private investigator who turned out had been
hired by Mr. Epstein, went and parked his car in
front of her home. And then, indeed, as I
understand it -- I wasn't there, but I was
getting frantic reports from -- from people in
Florida about what was going on -- the car was
pivoted so that I think the phrase is
high-beaming or something. The private
investigator was shining his lights into S.R.'s
home and she was terrified.
We were trying to get assistance to her and
then we went -- we were filing motions to try to
protect her. She had to flee her home, so that's
what happened to S.R. just a few days before she
went to trial.
And so I'm thinking, you know, if we call
Mr. Dershowitz, who is his first call going to
be? I mean I think -- I didn't have this
information on December 30th. I want the record
to be clear that, sure enough, we learned today
that within just a day or two of these
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allegations coming out, Dershowitz called
international sex trafficker Epstein to make sure
their memories coincided or something like that.
And I was afraid if we contacted Alan
Dershowitz, what had happened to S.R. was going
to happen to Virginia Roberts, which was going to
be even worse because she had been hiding out in
Australia for a number of years to escape
Epstein.
And now this would potentially tip him off
that she was now back in contact and he would
redouble efforts to find her. So I was, frankly
again, just speaking for myself, I'm not speaking
for my co-counsel, but I was extremely afraid of
tipping off Mr. Dershowitz that we were going to
be filing this pleading because he would have
contacted Epstein in the same intimidation
tactics and, indeed, life-threatening tactics
that had apparently been used against other
witnesses might be used against her.
I mean, I also was thinking frankly, about
whether to file this pleading, because of the
risk that she would be in, but I thought that the
safest way to protect her was to file this so
that the information was out there.
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And, at that point, you know, you know, if
she disappeared or something, the world would
know, you know, who the first person would be to
look at would be, you know, Jeffrey Epstein and
other people to look at would be those who were
associated with him.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. I want to go back to your testimony a bit ago
about the Fifth Amendment. You testified that
Mr. Epstein took the Fifth when he was asked about
Professor Dershowitz?
A. Yes.
Q. Is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. Didn't he take the Fifth with respect to a
whole host of people?
A. With some other people, yes, but not with
every person. That's why I want my memory to aid here.
If you look at the Jeffrey Epstein answers to
interrogatories in one of the civil cases, he provided,
for example, the name of Alessi as someone who would
have relevant information, but not Dershowitz.
And that was consistent with I think invoking
the Fifth, not on the sort of household people, but the
people who were higher up in the echelon which would
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have been, in my view, Mr. Dershowitz.
Q. At his deposition, he took the Fifth as to
everyone he was asked about; isn't that true?
A. I haven't looked at the depositions lately.
There were also variations in tactics that he used. I
recall for example, that sometimes when he was asked
about a person, even if he knew that person, he would
pretend not to know that person and try to communicate
that, you know, maybe he didn't know that person.
But he did he did have broad invocations of
the Fifth Amendment in his deposition. I certainly
wouldn't quarrel with you on that.
Q. And you understand or I believe this was in
your testimony that if a person takes the Fifth in
response to a question in a civil litigation, that
answer can be used against the person generally; is that
right?
A. Sure. Right.
Q. Are you aware of any authority whatsoever
that Person A taking the Fifth can be used as evidence
against Person B?
A. Yeah, we are sitting here in the -- let's
see, we are in Florida, in the 11th Circuit, and that
is -- there's 11th circuit case law that allows that to
happen. I could give you the citation, you know, in
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about five minutes if you know me take a break, I can
give you the case.
Q. We -- we -- we can come back to it.
A. Okay.
Q. In your mind, if you have a witness who is
asked about a long litany of persons and he takes the
Fifth Amendment in response to all of them, is it fair
to draw an adverse inference as to the other person?
A. Okay. So now this will be about a
three-minute answer, if that's okay, and I would say the
answer to that question is, yes, and I want to explain
why.
The 11th Circuit I'll give you the name, if I
have a chance to look at WesLaw or something like that
has a four-factor test that says, look, you can't just
draw an adverse inference against someone in every
circumstance, you have to balance various factors.
And so you have to look at the relationship
between the parties and things like that, the degree of
control that one person has over another party.
Different factors that you would look at.
And so I -- I think there are two things here
that would lead to the conclusion that under the
four-factor balancing test, the adverse inference could
be used in the 11th Circuit and recall that the crime
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victims' rights act case that we are talking about is in
the Southern District of Florida. I think the record
should be clear that that is in the 11th Circuit. And
so that case law says that you look at these different
factors, one of the factors, that to my mind would weigh
heavily in favor of drawing the adverse inference would
be the degree of control that the one party has over the
other.
Dershowitz was the attorney for Epstein and,
indeed, we heard today that he continues to be the
attorney on the Tri-Tech case and I'm assuming an
attorney/client privilege on other matters as well. So
he would seem to have a significant control over that.
The other thing that was going on in my mind
when I'm drawing the adverse inference is that there
might be some people that are invoking the Fifth
Amendment but not getting sound legal advice.
An attorney can only allow his client to
assert a Fifth Amendment privilege in civil case if
there's a significant risk that the answer will be
incriminating. You can't just invoke it willy-nilly.
And I knew that Mr. Epstein had been
receiving -- you know, as a billionaire would -- you
know, the best legal advice that money could buy, and
the advice he was getting with regard to questions about
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Mr. Dershowitz was apparently, based on the transcripts
I was seeing, to take the Fifth even with regard to any
knowledge of Mr. Dershowitz.
So in those circumstances I did think it was
highly fair to draw an inference from Mr. Epstein,
particularly where, you know, like some of the sexual
abuse involved Virginia, Epstein, and Dershowitz was the
allegations, you know, the trafficking and so forth.
So you know, if Virginia is making an
allegation, Mr. Epstein is invoking the Fifth and
Mr. Dershowitz is, you know, declining to answer
questions, it seemed to me in those circumstances an
adverse inference would be fair.
Q. Isn't it routine practice for a witness who
is the target or faces -- I'm going to start over.
Isn't it routine practice for a witness who
faces potential criminal liability to take the Fifth as
to all substantive questions?
A. That's not -- no. I would say absolutely
not. And again, I'm drawing -- I was a federal
prosecutor for four years. I was a federal district
court judge for about five-and-a-half years. I would
say, that is not the practice and, indeed, that would be
inconsistent with Fifth Amendment case law as I
understand it.
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Q. As a prosecutor, did you ever in a
prosecution against one person successfully introduce
into evidence that somebody else had taken the Fifth?
MR. SCAROLA: In a criminal case?
MR. SIMPSON: In a criminal case, yeah.
THE WITNESS: So I had about 20 trials, most
of them I was in the general crimes units in the
eastern district of Virginia. Most of them
involved drug dealers and gun runners that did
not -- where those issues didn't come up.
So as sitting here today, I can't recall a
circumstance where in that criminal case I was
able to do that. The standards for using it in a
civil case would be much, much broader.
MR. SIMPSON: Move to strike nonresponsive
portion of the answer.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. Have you been involved in a civil case in
which you have successfully introduced into evidence the
fact that Person A took the Fifth Amendment as evidence
against Person B?
A. I haven't been involved in many civil cases
involving invocations of the Fifth Amendment so I can't
recall a circumstance like that right now.
Q. And is the 11th Circuit case you're referring
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a criminal case or a civil case?
A. My understanding, it's a civil case.
Q. Did you ask -- you referred to the complaint
that is styled Jane Doe 102 versus Epstein, you referred
to that complaint?
A. Yes.
Q. And Jane Doe 102 is Virginia Roberts,
correct?
A. Yes.
Q. And you talked about the Josefsburg firm, Bob
Josefsburg, who we all -- there was testimony about him
being a respected lawyer; you heard that. Right?
A. Right.
Q. Did you ever ask Mr. Josefsburg if he -- if
the term "academicians" in that complaint included Alan
Dershowitz?
A. Did I --
MS. McCAWLEY: I'm sorry. To the extent that
it reveals anything that is a privilege of
Virginia's because she was represented by
Mr. Josefsburg, I don't want you to reveal.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. I'm just asking whether you ever asked him
the question. Don't give me the answer right now. But
did you ever ask him the question?
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A. Did I personally do that?
Q. Yes.
A. No. To my knowledge, I've never met
Mr. Josefsburg, so no.
Q. To your knowledge, did anyone else in the
group of attorneys you were working with ask
Mr. Josefsburg that question?
MR. SCAROLA: Excuse me. To the extent that
that question would call for a communication
within the common interest privilege, you should
not answer it.
THE WITNESS: I'm going take my counsel's
advice. I can't answer that.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. You're not going to answer whether to your
knowledge anyone asked Mr. Josefsburg?
A. Right.
Q. But you are testifying that the fact that
Mr. Josefsburg had signed a complaint with a generic
term "academicians" in it was some evidence, in your
mind, against Professor Dershowitz?
A. Yes, because he's an academician and shortly
after the complaint was filed, a partner in his firm
began asking Alan Dershowitz questions about the sex
abuse matter that we are discussing here.
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Q. Did you misspeak about whether they were
asking for Mr. Dershowitz or they were asking some other
witness?
A. No, they -- I'm sorry. They asked about --
thank you for that clarification. They asked other
witnesses about Dershowitz's knowledge of the matters we
have been discussing.
Q. All right. And at those depositions, which
deposition do you have in mind?
A. Rodriguez and Alessi.
Q. Okay. And didn't Rodriguez testify that he
didn't know, didn't have any knowledge as to
Mr. Dershowitz doing anything improper?
A. He said that he was present at the scene of
the crime, if you will. Now, whether he had direct
knowledge of what happened in the bedroom, you're right,
he didn't -- he did not indicate that.
Q. The "scene of the crime" being what?
A. Sex abuse of minor girls.
Q. But I take it you're referring to a location?
A. That's right.
Q. What location are you referring to?
A. Jeffrey Epstein's Palm Beach mansion.
Q. How many academicians visited Mr. Epstein's
Palm Beach mansion?
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A. I'm not certain.
Q. Do you -- can you give any estimate at all?
A. You know, in this case, I've probably seen
reference to another in Florida, you know, maybe another
four or five academics that had some kind of interaction
with Epstein.
Q. And you are aware that Epstein was so closely
associated with Harvard, that he had his own office
there?
A. No, I didn't know that Mr. Epstein had an
office at Harvard.
Q. Did you know that Mr. Epstein regularly had
dinners and other social events in which there were
scores of distinguished academicians?
A. Are we talking about Florida or New York?
Q. Generally.
A. Yeah, I knew there was some events like that
in New York. I don't recall having specific information
about an event like that in -- in Palm Beach.
MR. SCAROLA: Richard, let me just make note
of the fact that it's almost 4:30, and by
agreement, we are going stop at 4:30, so if
there's something really pressing you want to get
in this afternoon, this would be a good time to
do that.
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MR. SIMPSON: Well, we have a lot to cover,
but I'll ask a few more questions until we get to
that -- that time.
MR. SCAROLA: Okay. It's 4:25.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. In the Rodriguez deposition at one point, he
was asked a question and he responds with the name,
Larry Dershowitz. Do you recall that?
A. Oh, you mean Larry -- you didn't mean to say
Larry Dershowitz.
Q. His answer was Larry Dershowitz in the
deposition?
A. I don't recall that.
Q. Did you consider whether he was thinking
about Larry Summers ^ (ph)?
A. My recollection of the Rodriguez depo and,
you know, there are two depos here, Alessi and
Rodriguez, was that -- that the identifiers with regard
to Dershowitz were famous criminal defense lawyer-type
which would fit Mr. Dershowitz, but not fit Mr. Summers.
Q. Okay. We will come back and look at the
transcript itself.
A. Okay. Sure.
Q. One of the other things that you mentioned in
your -- your answer, was that the flight logs showed
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Mr. Dershowitz on a flight with Tatiana; is that right?
A. Correct.
Q. Did you find out before December 30th of 2014
how old Tatiana was at the time?
A. Yes.
Q. How -- how old was she?
A. I understood she was around -- which time are
we referring to, 1998?
Q. We are referring to when she -- the log shows
her on a flight with Professor Dershowitz.
A. Yeah, I was understood she was over the age,
she was 18 or older, you know, and I think within a
couple of years maybe 18.
Q. And you heard today that Mr. Dershowitz's,
Professor Dershowitz's wife was able to determine in a
few second on Google that she was 24 at the time. Any
reason to question that?
A. Well, because -- I think I want to look at
the information we were talking about. Is the question
of time frame and so, you know, the Dershowitzes on
these flights with Epstein in 1998, and I think 2004,
2005, which is, you know, there's like a -- obviously a
six or seven-year period, so I would want to know
exactly what time frame we are talking about.
Q. Well --
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A. But I understood, let me be clear, I
understood Tatiana was, you know, 18 or older at the
time.
Q. And -- and -- and you could have found out
exactly how old she was; isn't that true?
A. Potentially, yeah.
Q. Yes. And in fact, we heard today that
someone found it in just a few seconds?
A. We heard a representation to that effect. I
don't know if that's true or not.
Q. Okay. Do you have any reason to doubt that
Tatiana was 24 at the time?
A. I mean, give or take. I mean, give or take.
I mean, I'm not trying to say -- let me be clear. I
know she's over the age of 18. Now whether she's 24 or
something, that was not something that I had
specifically --
Q. I understand you don't know, but I'm just
asking whether if we represent to you that our research
indicates she was 24 at the time, do you have any reason
to question that?
MR. SCAROLA: At what time?
MR. SIMPSON: At the time of the flight, the
flight logs showed --
THE WITNESS: 1998 flight?
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BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. Whatever the flight -- the date of the
flight?
A. Yeah. I think that sounds too old for
Tatiana.
Q. Okay.
A. But I mean, I don't, you know, we could
obviously check into it so...
Q. And you do know though that she was over 18?
A. Eighteen or over, yes.
Q. Eighteen or over. And have you ever heard of
an older man having a relationship with a younger woman;
has that ever happened in your experience?
A. Sure, but what --
Q. That's my --
A. I guess, how much of a difference? I mean
the question is, you know -- sure, there are examples of
that. It's unusual, but there are examples of that.
Q. Is a 24-year-old woman an adult?
A. Yes.
Q. Is there anything criminal or anything
criminal about a man of Jeffrey Epstein's age having a
relationship with a 24-year-old woman?
MR. SCAROLA: I assume you agree that depends
upon the nature of the relationship.
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MR. SIMPSON: Is there anything -- let me --
I think my question was clear.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. You can answer the question. Having a
romantic relationship with a 24-year-old?
A. Just if those are the only facts, sure,
that's not a crime.
Q. And so if --
MR. SCAROLA: And it is -- it is 4:30.
MR. SIMPSON: Let me just ask one more
question then.
MR. SCAROLA: Sure. So long as it isn't one
of the 30-minute ones.
MR. SIMPSON: That's in the witness's
control.
MR. SCOTT: That applies to you.
MR. SCAROLA: So stop smiling.
MR. SCOTT: I'm not smiling at all. I'm
anything but smiling, Mr. Scarola.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. My -- my question --
MR. SCOTT: Oh, you are.
BY MR. SIMPSON:
Q. My question, Mr. Cassell, is that if all you
have is the fact that a middled-aged man is on an
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airplane with a 24-year-old woman, is there a basis to
draw an adverse inference from that about anything?
A. If that's all that you have, obviously not.
MR. SIMPSON: Okay.
MR. SCAROLA: Thank you.
MR. SIMPSON: We will break then and we will
talk off the record about logistics for tomorrow.
MR. SCAROLA: Okay.
THE VIDEOGRAPHER: We are going off the video
record, 4:31 p.m.
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