Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law professor emeritus, told Newsmax on Wednesday that the mass release of Justice Department documents tied to the late Jeffrey Epstein has sparked what he called a wave of "left-wing McCarthyism."
He said many people were smearing individuals with unverified claims.
Dershowitz reacted on "Rob Schmitt Tonight" to the release of millions of pages connected to the Epstein investigation, much of it heavily redacted and based on anonymous or confidential sources.
"First of all, this is the worst instance of left-wing McCarthyism that I've seen since 1954," Dershowitz said.
"I've gone through a lot of these files," he said. "A typical file says an unnamed source, confidential source or a name, redacted source, says that so-and-so who's named John Smith had sex with an underage girl."
Dershowitz, who once represented Epstein, said many of the allegations circulating in media coverage are demonstrably false but are being treated as fact.
"Now, a lot of the stories are false," he said, citing a recent report involving a former student research assistant.
"It says a confidential source said that he had many conversations with Ghislaine Maxwell, who went to jail," he continued. "Well, he never met her. He never had a conversation with her."
Dershowitz said he knows the identity of the source and that federal authorities themselves had questioned the person's credibility.
"I know who the confidential source is," he said. "The confidential source is somebody who the FBI said was not to be believed."
Dershowitz was pressed on why alleged victims have not publicly named additional perpetrators if widespread abuse occurred.
"It's not true. That's why," he replied. "Let's get at the truth.
"Let's turn everything over — no redactions, no eliminations."
Dershowitz accused Democrats of hypocrisy for criticizing the document release after years of silence.
"It's left-wing McCarthyism and worse in many ways than what happened in the 1950s," he said.
"We're seeing people make accusations ruining careers without the person accused [getting] the opportunity even to know the name of the accuser," Dershowitz continued.
"It's un-American. It's in violation of the Sixth Amendment," he said. "It's unconstitutional, and it's just wrong."
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