- Alan Dershowitz, among President Donald Trump’s impeachment attorneys, provided an audacious new defense Wednesday during the president’s Senate impeachment trial.
- He stated that if a president did something legal that he thought would get him reelected, and was for that reason in the public interest, he should not be impeached.
- Critics state Dershowitz’s arguments indicated that President Richard Nixon must not have faced impeachment charges for covering up the Watergate burglary in 1974.
- Nixon’s allies had actually burglarized the Watergate complex in 1972 to look for politically harmful details about the Democrats ahead of his reelection that year.
- ” Alan Dershowitz unimpeached Richard Nixon today,” John Dean, who served as Nixon’s White Home counsel, tweeted Wednesday.
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Alan Dershowitz, among the lawyers protecting President Donald Trump at his impeachment trial, has based his defense not on a point-by-point defense of the proof provided by Democrats but on seeking to undermine the foundation of their argument.
Dershowitz has argued that abuse of power and obstruction of Congress– the charges on which Trump was impeached– aren’t technically criminal activities therefore can’t be grounds for removing a president from workplace.
On Wednesday he took his arguments a step further, informing senators that presidents could not be impeached for legal actions they thought were in the general public interest
In other words, Dershowitz argued, due to the fact that Trump believes his reelection remains in the general public interest, any legal actions he made to pursue that interest can not be grounds for elimination from workplace.
It is an argument that critics say evoked President Richard Nixon’s infamous defense of overall presidential authority in 1977: “When the President does it, that mean it’s not prohibited.”
— BBC Archive (@BBCArchive) May 26, 2016
Nixon made this argument in an interview with the British journalist David Frost, three years after resigning from office while facing his own impeachment.
” Every public authorities that I know believes that his election remains in the general public interest,” Dershowitz stated Wednesday. “And mainly you’re right. Your election remains in the general public interest.”
” And if a president did something that he believes will help him get elected, in the public interest, that can not be the kind of quid pro quo that leads to impeachment.”
It would therefore be in the general public interest for Trump to leverage nearly $400 million in military help to Ukraine while seeking investigations into his political rivals implied to aid in his reelection.
The argument nicely avoids the need to refute evidence that has actually emerged from the former White House national security consultant John Bolton, who in a coming book has actually reportedly claimed that Trump informed him straight that he made Ukraine help conditional on an examination into previous Vice President Joe Biden.
Associated Press
‘ Alan Dershowitz unimpeached Richard Nixon today’
The Trump defense group’s argument also has another big implication.
It blows up a decades-long agreement on the limitations of governmental power and suggests that Nixon was ideal and did not be worthy of impeachment for his role in the Watergate burglary.
In 1974, Nixon was facing impeachment charges of abusing his power for covering up the notorious break-in at the Washington, DC, Watergate complex, by his allies who were seeking politically destructive information about the Democrats ahead of his reelection.
United States Federal Government Picture
On Wednesday, John Dean, who functioned as White Home counsel under Nixon, tweeted: “Alan Dershowitz unimpeached Richard Nixon today. All Nixon was doing was blocking justice and abusing power because he thought he was the very best person for the USA to be POTUS.”
” Seriously, that was his motive!
” That would permit a president to do actually anything and ruin re-elections as a check on governmental behavior,” Katyal informed NBC News
In a subsequent tweet he included that if Dershowitz’s arguments became policy, presidents would be less constrained in their use and abuse of power than monarchs.
— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) January 29, 2020
Under Dershowitz’s defense there is a caveat: A president guilty of a statutory criminal activity can still be gotten rid of from workplace. But Nixon was never charged with any criminal offenses, and Trump has not been either.
Regardless, the argument suggests a shocking growth of presidential authority.
Writing in The Washington Post, the former Democratic Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, who sat on the House Judiciary Committee that voted to impeach Nixon in 1974, said Dershowitz was seeking to sweep the Nixon precedent “under the rug.”
” I concluded from the Nixon impeachment precedent that, to make up an impeachable offense, the president’s misuse of the powers of his office need to be severe and substantial, and must threaten our democracy,” she wrote. “The posts of impeachment versus Trump fulfill these requirements.”
- Learn More:
- Bolton reportedly went over issues that Trump was granting individual favors for authoritarian leaders with Attorney General Barr
- Trump’s previous chief of staff John Kelly sides with John Bolton and states the Senate should call witnesses in impeachment trial
- New survey on the eve of Trump’s impeachment trial discovers that 51%of Americans think he ought to be removed from office
%%.
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