In 2016, attorney Alan Dershowitz wrote in his book Electile Dysfunction: A Guide for Unaroused Voters, that the choice for president was between Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton or, as he put it, “a destabilizing candidate who shoots from the hip and engages in personal vendettas against a force for stability, who carefully measures her words and bases her actions (at least most of the time) on tested policies.”
Dershowitz, a retired Harvard law professor, continued: “It may seem strange that the most successful populist candidate in modern history is a New York City multimillionaire who started his career as a landlord and who made his fortune on upscale real estate; has become famous for firing people; has exploited bankruptcy laws to hurt small-business owners, workers, and other creditors; has insulted large groups of people comprising a majority of voters (women, Latinos, the physically challenged, Muslims); has used vulgar words on TV that offend Christians, parents of young children, and family-oriented people of all backgrounds.”
In addition, Dershowitz said: “What is clear is that Trump is prepared to violate existing international and domestic laws, as well as widely accepted principles of human rights, in his effort to stop terrorism.”
And there’s more.
“Even more disturbingly, Trump has sometimes lurched into the realm of dog-whistle anti-Semitism by half-heartedly courting the support of white-nationalist bigots,” Dershowitz wrote.
Dershowitz was of course right about Trump.
So when Trump is elected and America needs someone to confront this tyrant, what does Dershowitz do?
He becomes Trump’s best friend and defender.
Trump once bragged about hiring only the best people. This remains one of his biggest lies among the seemingly millions of lies he’s told. But he was correct about hiring Dershowitz.
Dershowitz may be the greatest criminal defense attorney in the last half-century so it’s perhaps reasonable that he would defend Trump.
But at what length.
Dershowitz succeeded in getting Jeffrey Epstein a plea deal. So he’s been working up –or down — to Trump.
See Jeffrey Epstein.
After defending one hedonist, he defended another, serving as Trump’s attorney during the president’s impeachment. Social media activist Andrea Junker wrote this about Dershowitz: “Alan Dershowitz is an attention whore who has spent his career finding legal loopholes for men who murder their wives and other men who serially sexually assault young women. No wonder Donald Trump adores him.”
Dershowitz claims that defending Trump is the latest in his long career as a civil libertarian.
Nancy Gertner, a retired judge and former law professor at Harvard University, wrote that Dershowitz has moved further and further away from his legal principles as he defended Trump by using false statements and lies in his defense.
Gertner’s essay details how Dershowitz has abandoned his commitment to civil liberties.
Here is an excerpt from the essay.
“It was not remotely the position of a civil libertarian to claim that a president is more powerful than a king. Just the opposite. Founding father Alexander Hamilton, who was a proponent of a strong president, believed impeachment was a ‘crucial instrument to curb possible abuses arising from the enlarged powers he otherwise championed,’ as his biographer, Ron Chernow wrote.
“While no one should conflate Dershowitz’s views with the dangerous positions of his client, he is surely accountable for his own when he was currying favor with Trump, saying what his future boss wanted to hear, on the platforms he was likely to hear it. He can’t dial those comments back now, pretending that his representation of Trump is limited to scholarly constitutional issues.”
https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2020/01/28/alan-dershowitz-trump-impeachment-nancy-gertner
Professor Gertner referred to a Saturday Night Live skit of Jon Lovitz appearing as Alan Dershotwitz. Here it is:
