Incident Details
- Date of Incident
- November 2020
- Legal Orders
-
-
subpoena
for
other testimony
- Nov. 1, 2020: Pending
- Nov. 17, 2020: Objected to
- May 7, 2021: Carried out
-
subpoena
for
other testimony
- Legal Order Target
- Journalist
- Legal Order Venue
- Federal
Subpoena/Legal Order
Attorney Alan Dershowitz in 2020. In November of that year, Dershowitz subpoenaed journalist Sharon Churcher as part of a defamation suit related to litigation surrounding accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Journalist complies with Dershowitz subpoena, testifies
Journalist Sharon Churcher testified in a deposition on May 7, 2021, as part of a defamation suit related to litigation surrounding accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his associates.
Churcher published an article in U.K. outlet The Mail on Sunday in 2011 in which she named Virginia Giuffre as one of the anonymized women central to litigation against Epstein. Giuffre told a Florida court in January 2015 that she had been forced by Epstein to have sex with Prince Andrew and lawyer Alan Dershowitz. Dershowitz denied the allegations.
In April 2019, Giuffre filed a defamation suit against Dershowitz in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. As part of that suit, Dershowitz subpoenaed Churcher for testimony about her interviews with Giuffre in 2011.
Court records do not indicate when the subpoena was issued, but show a filing from Churcher’s attorney, Laura Handman, on Nov. 17, 2020, in which Handman told the court she planned to file a motion to quash the subpoena. (The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker is therefore listing the subpoena as having been issued at the beginning of that month.) Handman argued that Churcher was protected by the New York Shield Law from disclosing the identity of a confidential source or any information obtained in confidence.
On Nov. 20, Dershowitz responded to Handman, arguing that Churcher had waived the shield law’s protections by disclosing details from her conversations with Giuffre to a book publisher in 2019 and producing a transcript of the 2019 exchange.
On Nov. 23 and in subsequent updates over the following months, Handman acknowledged to the court that the transcript might impact her anticipated motion to quash, and said she was conferring with Dershowitz’s counsel about the scope of that motion and Churcher’s potential testimony.
Court records indicate that Churcher was deposed on May 7, 2021, although the transcript of that deposition was sealed. In July 2022, Churcher appeared on Dershowitz’s list of anticipated fact witnesses. But in November, Giuffre and Dershowitz agreed to dismiss the case.
Handman did not respond to questions from the Tracker in March 2025 about the subpoena’s issue date and the scope of Churcher’s deposition.
Journalist Sharon Churcher was subpoenaed for testimony as part of a defamation suit related to litigation surrounding accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his associates.
As a reporter for The Mail on Sunday in 2011, Churcher published the first in a series of articles wherein Virginia Giuffre, under her maiden name Virginia Roberts, was named as one of the Jane Does central to ongoing litigation against Epstein. The Miami Herald reported in 2018, in a timeline of the case, that in January 2015, Giuffre filed “court papers in Florida claiming that she was forced by Epstein to have sex with Prince Andrew and lawyer Alan Dershowitz when she was underage.”
Dershowitz vehemently denied Giuffre’s allegations, writing to the Herald shortly thereafter: “I never met Roberts; I never had sex with her; she simply made up the entire story for money.”
In April 2019, Giuffre filed a defamation suit against Dershowitz. As part of that suit, Dershowitz subpoenaed Churcher, seeking her testimony about communications with Giuffre; Churcher’s attorney, Laura Handman, responded to the subpoena in November 2020. Dershowitz also filed a countersuit against Giuffre in November.
That same month, Handman filed a pre-motion request to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to quash the subpoena against Churcher, writing, “Although the Subpoena does not specify the precise topics on which Dershowitz intends to question Churcher, in discussions with the undersigned, his counsel made clear that they intend to inquire about her 2011 interviews with Giuffre to determine what, if anything, Giuffre said about her interactions with Dershowitz from 2000-2002. They also stated their contention that emails between Churcher and Giuffre show that Churcher was not acting as a journalist in her interactions with Giuffre.”
The request noted that a previous subpoena had been issued to Churcher by Ghislaine Maxwell, accused of abetting Epstein in sex trafficking of minors and a defendant in a 2016 defamation lawsuit filed by Giuffre, and was quashed that year by the same court, citing New York’s shield law and “First Amendment reporter’s privilege.”
Handman confirmed to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker in April 2021 that the matter remains pending.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker catalogues press freedom violations in the United States. Email tips to [email protected].
