Retired Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who has repeatedly distanced himself from former Palm Beach billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein's sex-ring scandal, is the target of an accuser's libel lawsuit.

Dershowitz responded Tuesday with fighting words directed at the plaintiff, Virginia Giuffre, saying, “She has made a terrible mistake, and her lawyers have made a terrible mistake in filing this because she will be going to prison.”

Giuffre, one of the women who claims Epstein engaged in human trafficking and sexual assault when they were underage girls, accused Dershowitz in the New York federal lawsuit of making knowingly false and malicious defamatory statements against her.

She claims Dershowitz's statements claiming her legal pursuits of Epstein were based on fabricated details and Dershowitz's flat-out denials that he engaged in sexual acts with her amount to “a desperate barrage of false and increasingly defamatory attacks” on Giuffre.

Dershowitz, who retired as a Harvard law professor in 2013 and has been an attorney in a string of high-profile legal matters, asserted Giuffre has walked into a legal quagmire that will result in significant repercussions.

“This finally gives me an opportunity in court to prove this woman is a perjurer,” he told the New York Law Journal.

The suit is the latest legal clash between Epstein and his allies on one side and a cadre of women who have come out publicly to accuse him and others around him of sexual acts that went far beyond the single state charge of solicitation he pleaded guilty to in 2008.

Giuffre has waged a number of battles with Epstein, Dershowitz and others over her claims she was one of a number of teenage girls lured to Epstein's Palm Beach mansion, only to be sexually abused by Epstein and others.

Dershowitz, Giuffre claims, was one of the others. She claims Epstein required her to be “on call,” and  she was regularly “lent out to others for sexual purposes” over the course of two years. According to her complaint, Giuffre engaged in sexual acts with Dershowitz on multiple occasions, including in Epstein's Manhattan residence.

The long-simmering situation surrounding Epstein came to a head last year when the Miami Herald published a series detailing allegations about by dozens of women and specific allegations leveled against Dershowitz by Giuffre.

Her complaint said a 2014 lawsuit filed on her behalf against Dershowitz is the source of the former professor's assertions that she committed perjury.

According to Giuffre's complaint, Dershowitz asserted her own lawyers didn't believe her claims against him and she intentionally committed perjury as part of an extortion scheme, which ended in an undisclosed settlement.

Since then, Giuffre said Dershowitz has remained on the attack, making public statements questioning her veracity and other unsupported claims.

“Dershowitz has repeatedly publicly claimed that he wanted to have a trial that would determine the facts concerning his conduct,” the complaint states. Dershowitz “now has what he claims to have been looking for.”

In a statement, Boies Schiller Flexner partner Josh Schiller, who represents Giuffre, said Dershowitz needed to address the detailed factual allegations against him “with something more than emotional conclusory denials and ad hominem attacks.”

“Mr. Dershowitz continues his unfortunate pattern of trying to avoid dealing with his own conduct by attacking victims and their lawyers,” Schiller said. “Whether or not that works with the media (I personally don't think it does), that doesn't work in court.”

For his part, Dershowitz reiterated his claim that he has never met Giuffre, and it will be he who provides documentary evidence in court to show she is the one being dishonest. He claimed his filings would provide a counterpoint to each allegation by Giuffre.

Dershowitz said he was still putting together his legal team in the matter.

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