WASHINGTON _ A federal judge in New York on Monday ordered that a lawyer for retail magnate Leslie Wexner can be forced to give testimony in a defamation suit brought against celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz but held off on forcing testimony from the longtime Victoria's Secret owner and friend of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska instructed lawyers for Dershowitz, Wexner and Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre to have a protective order on her desk by the close of her business Tuesday or risk having her impose rules on what sorts of documents can be sealed and kept out of public view.
Giuffre is the most prominent accuser of the late Epstein, claiming he abused her as a teenager and then forced her into sexual slavery with powerful men, including Dershowitz. He sued her for defamation over that claim, and she is countersuing him over his assertion that she was extorting him in order to carry out a larger extortion scheme against Wexner.
Preska did not give Dershowitz's knee-deep legal team what it wanted _ the ability to question Wexner, who had a big role in the rise of Epstein to wealth and prominence. To the chagrin of Dershowitz's lawyers, the judge said she would wait first for both sides to question within the next 60 days John Zeiger, an attorney in Columbus, Ohio, who represents Wexner's interests.
Only then will she decide if she'll let them seek Wexner's testimony as a nonrelated party to the lawsuit.
"To be frank, I think that there is close to zero percent chance that Mr. Wexner is going to voluntarily agree to be deposed," argued Christian Kiely, on behalf of Dershowitz.
Lawyers for Giuffre last week told Preska they also wanted to question Wexner, but Monday told her they have since learned that prior attorneys for Giuffre had only previously talked with Wexner's attorney and not him.
If Wexner is forced to provide a deposition, they too want to question him, but lawyers said they did not think either side needed more than the testimony of Zeiger. Compelling Wexner to give testimony could open the door to a more complicated lawsuit that requires more documents and more nonparty witnesses, they warned.
"I am very concerned that once we start opening that door it's going to become a circus," said Nicole J. Moss, an attorney for Giuffre.
Wexner is the founder of retail giant L Brands, at its height known for its brands like Victoria's Secret and The Limited. With broad power of attorney powers, Epstein handled Wexner's personal investments and those for his charity foundations during the zenith of Wexner's retail acclaim.
Dershowitz seeks the testimony of Wexner and Zeiger because he alleges they privately settled a lawsuit with Giuffre. But in a strongly worded pre-hearing filing, an attorney for Zeiger said that was bunk.
"To be clear, no settlement or agreement of any kind has been entered into with Ms. Giuffre or her legal counsel," wrote Marion H. Little Jr.
Dershowitz, he wrote the judge, cites a partial and unauthorized recording from one of several phone conversations, in which he "promotes his defense narrative and inaccurately conflates his representations as evidence he possesses."
Little accused Dershowitz of using Wexner to spin a media narrative amid the damaging accusations from Giuffre. She alleges she was forced by Epstein and his accused madam, Ghislaine Maxwell, to have sex with Dershowitz, who became a household name in 1995 during the televised defense of football legend O.J. Simpson.
Dershowitz was instrumental in negotiating a nonprosecution agreement more than a decade ago that absolved Epstein, his close associates and unnamed others of potential federal charges of sex trafficking. The details of his deal were highlighted in the Miami Herald's "Perversion of Justice" series.
Preska was as much a traffic cop as a judge on Monday. Some of the fight over Wexner's testimony spills over into a similar lawsuit in New York state courts, where Dershowitz is suing Giuffre's former lawyer, David Boies. The judge told parties in the federal case that she would consult with a state judge to maximize testimony by making it admissible in her case and the state case.
And, Preska is also hearing arguments in the unsealing of documents from a civil case settled in 2017 between Giuffre and Maxwell. The Miami Herald and social media blogger Mike Cernovich intervened in that case in an effort to have many previously unsealed documents made public, and Preska ruled in late July that there is overwhelming public interest in releasing them. That case overlaps the Dershowitz and Giuffre countersuits because both sides want Maxwell's deposition made public.
But Maxwell is fighting that, especially since her arrest July 2 on charges that she helped procure and traffic women, some of them underage, for Epstein, who was arrested himself in July 2019 and was found hanging in a jail cell a month later. Maxwell appealed Preska's decision to unseal her deposition in the civil case, and that is slated to be heard by a New York appellate court Thursday.
Maxwell's lawyers have argued that release of the deposition would hurt her chance at a fair trial in the criminal case and that previously unsealed documents had not been properly redacted, resulting in the inadvertent release of sensitive information that should have been kept under wraps, such as Maxwell's email address.
Wexner was also represented on the court call by New York attorney Guy Petrillo, the former head of the criminal division in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. Petrillo was briefly in the news two years ago when he was hired to represent President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, before Cohen pleaded guilty to tax evasion and campaign finance charges related to hush money payments he arranged for the porn star Stormy Daniels, who allegedly had an affair with Trump.
