Plenty of (pretty, pretty, pretty good) Curb Your Enthusiasm jokes followed recent news of Larry David unloading in a screaming match with high-profile attorney Alan Dershowitz on Martha’s Vineyard. The confrontation took place in a grocery store, as first reported by Page Six, which relayed the exchange for all to see. David was all kinds of upset about spotting Dershowitz with his arm around former Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whose contribution to the unfolding catastrophe in Afghanistan hasn’t gone unnoticed. There’s been no further word from David on the incident, but Dershowitz is happy to talk (and then talk some more).
While speaking with Newsmax, Dershowitz relayed how his former friend couldn’t stomach the sight of him, following their previous fallout over Dershowitz representing Donald Trump. “Larry starts screaming at me!” the former member of O.J. Simpson’s dream team said. “He just couldn’t couldn’t control himself. I thought he was gonna have a stroke! … I was all these horrible, horrible things.”
Dershowitz, who remarked upon how he’s lost an awful lot of friends despite mostly representing Democrats (including Bill Clinton) in legal disputes, appeared to be aghast over David’s dismissal of their decades-long friendship. “This is a guy whose daughter I helped get into college… I represented him and his family pro bono in a dispute he had on Martha’s Vineyard,” Dershowitz asserted while adding that Pompeo was his former student, so he wanted to support the guy. “Just because I defended President Trump in front of the Senate and I patted Mike Pompeo on the back, that’s enough to end a 25-year friendship.”
As for where this dispute goes from here, Dershowitz maintained, “I’m not gonna engage with him in a screaming match.” Still, he added that he’s been cancelled by many friends and endless organizations, which he finds unfair: “This is pure McCarthyism. When you start blaming the lawyer because you don’t agree with the client, that’s McCarthyism.”
However, Dershowitz conceded that his analogy might not be a perfect one. “I didn’t lose my job,” he admitted. “I haven’t lost my living the way some people did during McCarthy’s time, but I have lost lots and lots of friends.” Well, U.S. citizens do have the right to an attorney for sure, so legal ethics are one thing, but people also have the right to step away from friendships as a result.