New York — Oren, Alon, and Tal Alexander surrounded themselves with beautiful women. Young and wealthy, they enjoyed sex and the pursuit of it. They flirted in nightclubs and on dating apps, engaging in potential relationships in the Hamptons, Aspen and other upscale locales.
The brothers – two of whom are distinguished real estate brokers known as “Team Athe other a private security executive — were certainly womanizers, their attorney told the jury. But they were not the hard-drinking rapists and sex traffickers that federal prosecutors claim.
The jury in Manhattan federal court began deliberations on Thursday in case This could put twins Oren and Alon, 38, and Tal, 39, in prison for the rest of their lives.
In marathon closing arguments Tuesday and Wednesday, defense attorneys urged the jury to scrutinize carefully Evidence Leaving aside the emotional weight of nearly a dozen women who testified that one or more of the Alexander brothers sexually abused them. The brothers pleaded not guilty.
Oren Alexander’s lawyer, Mark Agnifilo, said the brothers’ playboy lifestyle and unemotional pursuit of sex “hurt a lot of people’s feelings,” leaving some women sad and upset. He said that this is the real reason for their trial.
“It’s not because they’re rapists. It’s not because they drug women. It’s because they have a certain set of characteristics that made a lot of people angry with them,” said Agnifilo, one of three defense attorneys who gave closing arguments.
He added: “They are reaching out to them. Why? Because they are pursuing women. They are pursuing women in all fields.” “That’s what the evidence shows. They don’t drug them, they don’t rape them, but they definitely stalk them.”
Also on Thursday, Tracy Tutor, star of Bravo’s “Million Dollar List Los Angeles,” became the latest woman to be sued for alleged sexual misconduct by the brothers. She claims Oren Alexander drugged and assaulted her in a restaurant bathroom while she was in New York City for a real estate event.
Jason Goldman, an attorney representing Oren Alexander in the civil lawsuits, said Tutor and her attorneys “timed the filing of this vulgar and patently false lawsuit for maximum media impact.” He said her allegations are more than a decade old and have already been aired publicly.
Agnifilo, who just received acquittals on the most serious charges in hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs’ sex trafficking trial last summer, brought his usual courtroom demeanor to his closing arguments in the Alexander brothers’ case.
“Acquittal takes courage. It really does,” he told the jury of six men and six women. “And I want you guys to know that this is what you have to do here. You have to have that courage.”
Diana Paul, Tal Alexander’s attorney, said prosecutors failed to present sufficient evidence to support the charges.
“You can’t build a house if you don’t have any bricks,” she said.
Both Agnifilo and Paul attacked prosecutors’ efforts to link the brothers to a blog that the government said encouraged the drugging and rape of women.
Agnifilo acknowledged that the blog was “horrible,” but said there was no evidence that the Alexander brothers wrote any of the posts cited by prosecutors. He said the government was using them to tarnish the image of the brothers.
“Is it tasteless? It’s absolutely tasteless. It’s shocking. It’s terrible,” Agnifilo said. “I submit to you that this does not help you. It does not help you make up your mind. It does not.”
“There is no evidence that any of the Alexander brothers wrote any of these notes, nor is there any evidence that Tal knew they existed,” Paul said.
She added: “The government is trying to link Tal to words he did not write, in a blog he did not know existed, to prove a conspiracy he was not part of.”
In a rebuttal Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Espinoza noted that the blog was found on the hard drive of a computer in Tal Alexander’s apartment, and traced the defendants’ “playbooks and goals,” including their justifications for the rape under a post titled “It’s Not Rape If…”.
She said the blog post reflects how the brothers justified rapes for more than a decade after 2008 by concluding that it was not rape if the women were left too afraid or humiliated to report it to authorities, if the woman had a crush on one of the brothers first, if they couldn’t remember every detail of the night, or if drugs left them with memory gaps and unable to fight back.
She said the defense’s arguments were “all nonsense.”
“This is not a close case,” Espinoza said, calling for guilty verdicts.
She said the brothers did not rely on the 11 women who “came forward in a torrent of evidence.”
Espinoza noted how defense attorneys highlighted isolated excerpts of testimony “to try to get you to avoid the bigger picture.”
“The defendants’ arguments are intended to confuse and distract you,” she said. “That bigger picture is what matters most.”