Criminal defense attorney Alan Dershowitz did yesterday what criminal defense attorneys are best at doing. Obfuscation and distraction. This is what they do. They develop arguments that weave a very fine story that can be very difficult to completely disprove, but at the same time, do not tell the whole story and distract from the more pertinent points of an issue.
This is precisely what they are paid to do. To sow doubt in the jurists’ minds. And he’s made a good career out of doing this, representing some of the most notorious criminals of our time. His most famous case, of course, was when he used these tactics to help OJ Simpson get away with murder.
Now, he’s doing it for someone even more dangerous than OJ. He’s doing it for the most powerful man on the planet, President Trump*.
What more could a defense attorney who thrives on high profile cases desire than to be on the stage defending the most powerful man on the planet? Aside from his obvious skeletons that he may be trying to protect (cough, cough Epstein cough, cough), might there be other motivations that a media whore defense attorney might have, to be on such a stage, other than “for love of country”?
Hmmmm….I wonder.
Can you imagine what an opportunity like this is for someone like Dershowitz? He gets to make an argument on the world stage for the most powerful man on Earth that goes against everything that every expert believes about the subject. What a high that would be for a defense attorney who has spent his life getting guilty people out of hot water. If he can pull this off, could he not claim to be the best defense attorney in history? This could be his magnificent opus!
Anyway, so Dershowitz spent a couple of hours meticulously explaining that impeachment, contrary to what nearly every constitutional expert has ever concluded (including himself), indeed does require an actual statutory crime in order to be legitimate. Therefore, the two articles of impeachment against President Trump* (abuse of power and obstruction of Congress) are obviously not impeachable.
As good defense attorneys do, they come prepared with a lot of research. He provided lots of examples of what people said back in the days of the founding. A quote here and a quote there, weaving it all together into a tale that sounds very plausible. I don’t doubt that all of his quotes are accurate and it would be very difficult to dispute much of what he said as far as being factual.
But the problem is, he leaves out everything that counters his arguments…everything that all experts have used to conclude exactly the opposite. It’s not that these experts have never heard of and considered the people and quotes and arguments that Dershowitz made…they have. But that doesn’t matter to a defense attorney. His target is not to convince the experts who would rightly and thoroughly destroy his arguments. Rather, his entire purpose is to convince those who don’t know any better. Those who hear a good argument and believe it without actually researching and looking at everything that argument is leaving out.
That’s how OJ got away with murder.
And that’s how Trump* keeps his supporters behind him.
Dershowitz is simply the latest person in the Trump* sphere who is spitting out a narrative that will keep the Trump* cult in line (which includes the Republican Senators).
In other words, Dershowitz’s entire argument was bullshit, just another example of the Bubble of Bullshit.
Let’s just step back and look at the big picture in regards to what he’s saying. The main thrust of his argument is that an actual crime is required for impeachment. Abuse of power and obstruction of Congress are not impeachable.
I could spend a lot of time picking away at Dershowitz’s presentation, point by point…for every quote he provided that supports his new epiphany on impeachment, a more relevant and winning quote can be presented that disputes it.
But that is not necessary.
His argument fails on the most basic understanding of our founding and the principles that guided it. It defies all logic when you consider the full spectrum of the mindset of the framers of the Constitution.
To believe that the founders would think, after a hard fought battle for freedom from a King who abused his power in many enumerated ways (see the Declaration of Independence), that it’s just fine for the President to abuse his power for personal gain without any remedy, is just mind-boggling. To say that abuse of power is not grounds for removal and that any accountability should be left to the voters in the next election is absurd, to say the least.
Imagine a scenario where the President can do whatever he wants without actually breaking any statutory crimes and there is no ability to hold him accountable. But it’s even worse than that because, according to Trump’s* defenders, he can also break any laws he wants to without the pesky nuisance of the threat of indictment, as long as he is President.
Think about that.
If that was true, the President is above the law and could actually simply declare himself President for life. What’s to stop him? According to the defenders of the President:
- You can’t indict him for breaking the law.
- You can’t investigate him without the permission of the courts.
- You can’t impeach him except for an actual crime, but couldn’t they then argue that you can’t say he committed a crime until he’s been convicted of one (remember that he’s innocent of a crime until he’s proven guilty of it in a court of law…due process and such), which takes us back to number 1.
This idea completely eliminates the entire system of checks and balances, achieved by the separation of powers that holds the Executive Branch to account. It’s impossible to come to a rational conclusion that this was the intent of the founders and that this was the system that the people approved of with the new Constitution.
If an actual crime is needed, then why even separate out impeachment proceedings from an actual court of law?
Why not leave it to the actual Judicial system that is already in place to handle due process properly and to ensure an impartial process to determine guilt or innocence?
Why would the founders intentionally muddy the waters of criminality with politics?
Why not simply state in the Constitution that the only way a President can be removed from office is upon conviction of a felony?
Would that not eliminate all questions and interpretative controversies if that was actually the intent of the founders? Would that not eliminate all possibilities of partisan political hackery involved in the process?
We know darn well how concerned the founders were with partisan politics, so why would they implement a system that would guarantee such a divisive process, if their intent was only to allow removal upon an actual crime, which any logical and rational reasoning would conclude is better handled in the court system?
So, let’s say that a President is accused of a crime. He can’t be indicted, so then the impeachment process begins.
Let’s say he is then convicted in the Senate for that crime and is removed from office.
Let’s say he then is charged in an actual court of law and goes to trial for the crime.
Let’s say he is then found not guilty by the actual court of law in our actual Judicial system.
Then what?
Is the impeachment and removal reversed? Why not? Due process concluded he committed no crime. Therefore, the impeachment should be null and void, right?
It’s silly when you actually think about it and work out all of the consequences of such an absurd theory that Dershowitz presented.