Alan Dershowitz: Democrats can't change that just by using words like "quid pro quo" and "personal benefit."
Alan Dershowitz argued that Trump cannot be impeached for pressuring Ukraine for investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden because doing so would be aimed at helping his reelection chances. Dershowitz said Trump's motivations would ultimately be fueled by the public interest because he believes his reelection is what's best for the country.
"Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest," Dershowitz said. "And mostly you're right. Your election is in the public interest."
"And if a president did something that he believes will help him get elected, in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment."
The comments, which came in response to a question about the legality of quid pro quos, could normalize the type of behavior that landed Trump in the middle of the impeachment scandal, and that Democrats say constitutes an improper solicitation of foreign influence in a US election.
Dershowitz added that all elected officials consider things in political terms, asking, "If you're just acting in the national interest, why do you need pollsters?"
"We may argue that it's not in the national interest for a particular president to get elected," he said, "and maybe we're right," but in order for it to be impeachable, he argued, one would have to prove that the decision was based solely on "corrupt motives."
"A complex middle case is 'I want to be elected. I think I'm a great president. I think I'm the greatest president there ever was and if I'm not elected, the national interest will suffer greatly.' That cannot be an impeachable offense," Dershowitz concluded.
Trump's legal team does not concede that the President attempted a quid pro quo. Dershowitz was speaking hypothetically. In his defense of Trump this week, Dershowitz has relied on controversial theories that are rejected by a wide cross-section of legal scholars.
When asked about the news, Dershowitz told "The View" hosts that he won't argue against witnesses, but said Bolton's testimony still wouldn't hold up against the president.
"Nothing in the Bolton revelations, even if true, would rise to the level of an abuse of power or an impeachable offense." he said, adding that House Democrats can't change that just by using words like "quid pro quo" and "personal benefit."
Bolton and other current and former White House aides have been barred by the White House from testifying, although Bolton said he would testify under subpoena.
"The one thing that's very clear is that if witnesses are permitted on one side, they have to be permitted on both sides," Dershowitz said in an interview on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" on Jan. 19. "And if witnesses are permitted, it will delay the trial considerably, because the president will invoke executive privilege as to people like John Bolton that will have to go to the court and we'll have to have a resolution of that before the trial continues."
Talking over each other and Dershowitz, the hosts also pressed the lawyer on why he seems to be the only constitutional scholar arguing that Trump's conduct wasn't impeachable.
"I made the constitutional arguments. My sole role in the case was to argue constitutional issues," he said, later adding, "It is not treason, bribery [or] high crimes and misdemeanors ... Congress is not above the law."
He further argued the point he made during the Trump legal team's opening arguments on the Senate floor, saying the articles brought forth by the House trial managers were too "vague" and "open-ended."
"This is the key point in this impeachment case, please understand what I'm arguing, is that purely noncriminal conduct, including abuse of power and obstruction of Congress are outside the range of impeachable offenses," Dershowitz said on the floor Monday evening, adding "The framers did intend to limit the criteria for impeachment to criminal-like conduct akin to treason and bribery."
The co-hosts also tried confronting Dershowitz on his previous statements about impeachment, with Goldberg suggesting he changed his mind because Trump was president. Dershowitz countered by claiming that he actually changed his mind on impeachment about four years ago when he looked into the possibility of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton getting impeached.
At one point, Goldberg compared Trump to former President Bill Clinton. "One president followed the law and did what he was supposed to do. We have a president now who's blocking people from doing stuff," she said, apparently referring to the administration opposing new witnesses.
Goldberg later groaned when Dershowitz referenced former President Abraham Lincoln during his speech before the Senate. "You have to go back in history. Impeachment doesn't change since the time of the Constitution," he said.
When it was co-host Sunny Hostin's turn, she pressed Dershowitz on the Government Accountability Office's (GAO) report that Trump broke the law by withholding Ukrainian aid. Dershowitz responded by claiming that the GAO didn't have the jurisdiction to claim that Trump engaged in criminal behavior, something he said the agency didn't claim anyway. He also added that the GAO was also wrong, noting that the president had the right to withhold funds as part of his authority to conduct foreign policy.
Hostin also seemed to try and trip Dershowitz up, asking him what kind of trial has he seen that doesn't have witnesses or evidence.
"Many, many," Dershowitz responded.
Co-host Meghan McCain was less controversial, asking Dershowitz how Democrats could improve their case against Trump. Dershowitz replied that it wasn't his job to help Democrats.
Ex-Congresswoman nails Alan Dershowitz for only considering Clinton impeachment and ignoring the Nixon articles
ReplyDeletePresident Donald Trump’s lawyer Alan Dershowitz has been criticized for the past few days as he struggled to justify what many consider terrible legal arguments. In an editorial for the Washington Post Wednesday, former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman (D-NY) blasted Dershowitz for ignoring the articles in former President Richard Nixon’s impeachment.
Holtzman was one of few members of Congress still living who was in the Judiciary Committee when the House began investigating Nixon. She is well acquainted with the law, and even after taking Alan Dershowitz’s Harvard Law School class, she still believes he is wrong that an abuse of power is a nothing-burger.
“His assertion flies in the face of the articles of impeachment voted against President Richard M. Nixon by the House Judiciary Committee — of which I was a member — in 1974,” she explained. “These articles did not charge Nixon with a crime, a fact Dershowitz willfully ignores. Not one of the three articles adopted by the Judiciary Committee mentioned a criminal statute, charged Nixon with violating any criminal statute or described how his conduct met the standards set forth in any criminal statute.”
She wasn’t surprised to see Dershowitz trying to ignore the percent set by the Nixon case, because it “demolishes his argument that a president may be impeached only for a criminal act.”
ershowitz, she said, simply pretended it didn’t exist.
“Even today, the Nixon precedent remains valid and powerful,” Holtzman wrote. “The first article of impeachment our committee adopted against Nixon charged him with a variety of acts to “delay, impede and obstruct” the investigation into the 1972 break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate hotel. This article did not reference the obstruction-of-justice statute or claim that Nixon’s actions violated that or any other statute.”
She explained that the Judiciary Committee’s report doesn’t demand proof for criminal acts by the president. It says, “it would be anomalous for the framers . . . to restrict the grounds for impeachment to conduct that was criminal.”
But, Dershowitz ignored it.
Holtzman explained that in the Nixon case, impeachment Articles II and III were even more important.
“The second was actually dubbed the ‘abuse of power’ article by committee members at the time,” she explained. “It won the most votes from Republicans on the committee. It, too, did not reference any criminal statute. Instead, it framed Nixon’s acts in covering up the break-in as an abuse of power. This article essentially charged Nixon with misusing the powers of his office to hide from law enforcement and Congress the involvement of his campaign and top aides in the Watergate break-in in an effort to win reelection — a matter that was not intended for the benefit of the American people but for Nixon’s personal gain.”
She said that the coverup did actually work and helped get Nixon reelected in an overwhelming landslide.
In the second article, there was a non-Watergate related piece that involved Nixon’s abuse of power: it was about the president trying to get IRS audits of his political rivals. Another was about Nixon authorizing his people to dangle pardons for the Watergate burglars to keep them from talking. These weren’t considered crimes, according to the committee, but they were impeachable acts.
Holtzman closed by quoting her committee’s 1976 report: “Criminal standards and criminal courts were established to control individual conduct. Impeachment was evolved to cope with both the inadequacy of criminal standards and the impotence of courts to deal with the conduct of great public figures.”
She told the Senate not to fall into Dershowitz’s false arguments.
Alan Dershowitz: Quid pro quos to help Trump get elected aren’t impeachable
ReplyDeleteA lawyer for President Trump argued Wednesday that if the commander-in-chief had multiple motives for asking Ukraine to probe Joe Biden, it would not matter even if one of them would benefit him politically.
“If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment,” retired Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz told the Senate during the first day of the question-and-answer phase of Trump’s impeachment trial.
“Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest.”
Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz had asked Trump’s lawyers whether quid pro quos were even illegal, and whether they were standard procedure for conducting foreign policy.
Dershowitz replied that if Trump had multiple motives — including one that benefited him politically — it would still be legal.
“Everybody has mixed motives, and for there to be a constitutional impeachment based on mixed motives would permit almost any president to be impeached,” he added, calling it dangerous to “psychoanalyze” Trump to determine his motives.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) then asked House managers about Dershowitz’s arguments that quid pro quos are standard operating procedure in foreign policy.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-NY) said that in every trial, “the question of the defendant’s intention or state of mind is always an issue,” responding to Dershowitz’s argument that Trump should not be psychoanalyzed to determine whether he abused his power.
Schiff also questioned Dershowitz’s belief that all quid pro quos were created equal, asserting that that theory would give a president “carte blanche” to act in their personal political interest rather than the national interest.
“The next president of the United States can ask for an investigation of you. They can ask for help in their next election from any foreign power,” Schiff said.
Senators began the first of two planned days of posing questions to both Trump’s legal team and the House Democrats who have served as prosecutors in the trial on charges of abusing power and obstructing Congress arising from his request that Ukraine investigate political rival Biden.
The questioning began about 1 p.m. and precedes a vote later in the week on whether to call witnesses as Democrats have sought.