Larry David says former friend Alan Dershowitz ‘made a deal with the devil’ as Trump’s lawyer

The Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm creator says Dershowitz, who also defended Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein, ‘only has himself to blame’ for being ostracised

Larry David has opened up about the collapse of his friendship with Alan Dershowitz, saying that Dershowitz “made a deal with the devil” when he became Donald Trump’s lawyer.

Dershowitz, a former Harvard University law professor, has been a member of legal teams for Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, OJ Simpson and Harvey Weinstein at various points in his career, and served on Trump’s defense team during the president’s first impeachment trial in 2020.

Reports emerged in 2021 that David and Dershowitz, who were friends and neighbours for years on Martha’s Vineyard, had a public argument during which the Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld creator was heard to call Dershowitz “disgusting”.

Dershowitz later confirmed the account was accurate, telling the New Yorker in 2022: “Suddenly, Larry David walks in to buy some groceries. I say, ‘Hey. Hi, Larry,’ and he turns away, and he just walks away. I say, ‘Larry, can’t we at least talk?’ He said, ‘No. You’re disgusting.’

“He called me disgusting, and he said he could never talk to me,” he added. “Here’s a guy who used to come to our house to work out in the gym. He would come to our house for dinner two or three times a summer.”

In a new profile of Dershowitz published by the Atlantic this week, David spoke about the incident for the first time. “I have lots of confrontations on my show but rarely in life. And then only if I think I can take them in a fight. Hence the Dershowitz dust-up,” he said.

In the Atlantic, Dershowitz spoke of feeling hurt that David had not contacted him when his son Elon died from a stroke last year aged 64. In response, David said he was “starting to feel a little sorry” for Dershowitz, “certainly because of his son.”

“I certainly regret not [reaching out],” David told the Atlantic. “As I said on Curb once, ‘I think of nice things. I just don’t act on them.’”

But the next day David contacted the Atlantic again to add: “I’m loath to say anything mean because he’s been so ostracised. But he only has himself to blame. He made a deal with the devil. Literally. And I’d bet the devil hasn’t said a word to him since the impeachment.”

In April, Dershowitz announced he was swapping to the Republican party after decades of supporting the Democratic party, which he labelled the “most anti-Israel party in US history”.

In June the US supreme court turned down a request by Dershowitz to revive a $300m defamation lawsuit he filed against CNN over the network’s coverage of remarks he made while defending Trump, which he claimed had been edited to make it falsely appear that he “had lost his mind”.