Keynote speaker David Boies, of Boies Schiller Flexner delivers the keynote address on "Protecting the Rule of Law"  at the Seventh Annual Securities Litigation and Enforcement Institute held  Jan.y 23, 2019, at the New York City Bar. Photo: David Handschuh/NYLJ

David Boies, the lawyer whose firm until recently represented Virginia Giuffre in her libel suit against retired Harvard professor and attorney Alan Dershowitz, sued Dershowitz for defamation in New York County Supreme Court on Thursday.

Giuffre is one of the women who says she was trafficked by billionaire Jeffrey Epstein as a teenager. She says Epstein and other men, including Dershowitz, sexually abused her. Dershowitz filed counterclaims against Giuffre in the Southern District of New York this week, denying all her claims and accusing her of defamation.

In November 2018, the Miami Herald reported that Dershowitz said Giuffre's lawyers coerced her into making up her claims to get money from powerful people, and Boies cited that statement as one example of Dershowitz's defamation campaign against him.

In the complaint, Boies, who is representing himself, listed the Herald article along with a series of others, including stories in the Harvard Crimson, New York magazine and the Washington Post. All the stories dealt with the Giuffre case, and Boies wrote that Dershowitz knowingly made false comments about him in each article, including accusing him of extortion.

In an interview Friday afternoon, Dershowitz said he has nothing to fear from the suit and will not be silenced by Boies' "bullying tactics."

"Truth is an absolute defense," Dershowitz said, adding that he's still considering all options for his response to the complaint.

Dershowitz said he's eager for Boies to be cross-examined about various elements of his career, including his work with the discredited blood-testing company Theranos.

"He's opened a Pandora's box that endangers his own career and endangers his law firm," Dershowitz said.

Boies' firm, Boies Schiller Flexner, where he is chairman and a managing partner, is not named in the complaint, and Boies confirmed Friday afternoon that the firm is not involved in the suit.

Dershowitz sought and won the disqualification of Boies Schiller attorneys from Giuffre's defamation suit in October on the basis of the witness-advocate rule, which bars attorneys from participating in cases where other lawyers in their firm might be called as witnesses.

Dershowitz said he planned to call Boies and his colleagues as witnesses in connection with a recording Dershowitz said he possessed, which contained comments from Boies allegedly disparaging Giuffre's account of her interactions with Dershowitz as untrue.

Boies said he still represents Giuffre in other matters.

He said he isn't typically "a great believer" in defamation suits, but he filed his suit against Dershowitz after realizing he had no other way to deal with the statements Dershowitz was making.

"We tried to ignore him, and that didn't work," Boies said.

Pointing out flaws in Dershowitz' narrative didn't work either, Boies said. Instead, he said he watched Dershowitz's allegations get more extreme until he felt like a defamation suit was the right response.

Read more:

Defamation Lawsuit Pits Alan Dershowitz Against Epstein Sex Trafficking Accuser

Boies Schiller Attorneys Disqualified in Dershowitz Defamation Case

Dershowitz Seeks Disqualification of Boies Schiller Attorneys, Dismissal of Epstein Accuser's Defamation Suit