After joining President Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team, constitutional scholar and Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz is once again publicly sniveling about being bullied—but this time, his persecutors are not residents of Martha’s Vineyard. Instead they take the form of CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Jeffrey Toobin, who cruelly interrogated him on his convenient about-face over what constitutes an impeachable act.
In the summer of 1998, when low-rise jeans and being friends with Jeffrey Epstein was socially acceptable, Dershowitz argued amid the Clinton scandal that an impeachable offense does not “have to be a crime,” adding, “If you have somebody who completely corrupts the office of the president and abuses trust and who poses great danger to our liberty, you don’t need a technical crime.” But the civil libertarian has now retrofitted his impeachment views to match those of Trump’s defense squad. While teasing the formal legal argument he will make on the president’s behalf, Dershowitz told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, “Without a crime there can be no impeachment.”
When pressed on his change of heart by Cooper the following day, Dershowitz insisted that though he has never been “wrong,” he is “just far more correct now than I was then.” He added, “It’s very clear now that what you need is criminal-like behavior akin to bribery and treason.” Cooper then suggested that Dershowitz, in a roundabout, legalese way, had just admitted that he was “wrong” before, but the lawyer countered with: “I think your viewers are entitled to hear my argument without two bullies jumping on everything I say.” One of those “bullies,” who struggled to get a word in edgewise, was CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, Dershowitz’s former Harvard student and mentee. “Oh, come on,” Cooper shot back. “What you’re saying, the words you are speaking, do not jibe with what you said in the past, and yet you’re not saying what you said in the past is wrong.”
Trump’s legal team laid out a more concise version of Dershowitz’s on-air ramblings in a legal brief published on Monday: “House Democrats’ novel theory of ‘abuse of power’ improperly supplants the standard of ‘High Crimes and Misdemeanors’ with a made-up theory that would permanently weaken the Presidency by effectively permitting impeachments based merely on policy disagreements. By limiting impeachment to cases of ‘Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors,’ the Framers restricted impeachment to specific offenses against ‘already known and established law.’”
While Dershowitz’s résumé features legal defenses of many unpopular public figures—including O.J. Simpson, who may or may not have murdered his wife; Claus von Bülow, who may or may not have tried to murder his wife; and Epstein, who may or may not have run an elite pedophile ring—for some reason, the famous attorney is suddenly nebbish about defending the president. Though he officially joined the president’s legal team on Friday, he hesitated to label himself Trump’s lawyer, asserting that he is “not a full-fledged member” of the team. He reluctantly conceded to playing “special teams” for Trump, telling CNN, “I’m the kicker and I can kick the field goal that wins the game. Fine.” Perhaps this is due to a genuine post-partisan conviction: He claims he would offer the same defense of an impeached President Hillary Clinton, and that his involvement in the case is merely scholarly. Or perhaps he’s hoping to reingratiate himself with his pals in Martha’s Vineyard, who as far as anyone knows are still shunning him.
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