Law professor Alan Dershowitz said he just wants everybody to apply the shoe-on-the-other-foot test. Dershowitz told FOX News host Tucker Carlson if you’re going after Donald Trump then you have to investigate Hillary Clinton for “everything she allegedly did.” If Clinton were president and Republicans decided to subject her to the impeachment process, Dershowitz said, Democrats would be screaming, “how dare you expand the criteria for impeachment!”
“I want everyone out there to imagine the following scenario,” Dershowitz began. “Let’s assume that when Bill Clinton was running for president, Paula Jones came up to him and said, ‘Unless you pay me $130,000, I’ll reveal our affair.’ And let’s assume that Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton together did exactly what is alleged that Donald Trump and [Michael] Cohen did together. I guarantee you ‘The New York Times,’ NBC, MSNBC would be railing against any prosecutor who dared to suggest that this was a violation of the campaign finance law. Everybody would be on the other side of this issue. There would be Republicans out there saying strip him of the presidency, impeach him, indict him. Every Democrat would be saying this is a witch hunt, this is terrible.”
“We need a single standard. If you wouldn’t go after Bill Clinton, don’t go after Donald Trump. If you’re going after Donald Trump, then you have to go after Hillary Clinton for everything she allegedly did,” Dershowitz said of the logic.
“I just want everybody to apply the shoe-on-the-other-foot test,” Dershowitz said Monday night. “If Hillary Clinton were president and Republicans were saying ‘lock her up,’ everybody would be on the other side. They’d be screaming about how dare you expand criminal statutes! How dare you expand the criteria for impeachment!”
Dershowitz said everything Trump is accused of doing in regard to an alleged Trump Tower in Moscow is all based on “hypotheticals and maybes.”
“One of your guests talked about the Federal Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA),” he said. “That applies when you a bribe a foreign official. What they’re arguing is that there was a rumor that maybe somebody offered Putin a penthouse in a tower that Trump was thinking of building in Moscow and if that had been done it would have been a violation of the FCPA. But it’s all based on hypotheticals and maybes.”
The legal eagle called out “liberal Democrat fair-weather civil libertarians” for trying to get Trump “by any means possible.” Dershowitz said that “true civil libertarians,” like himself, would vehemently oppose such a thing.
“All these liberal Democrat fair-weather civil libertarians are saying the hell with the Constitution, the hell with civil liberties, put all that aside, get Trump. That’s the most important consideration — get him by any means possible,” he told Carlson.
Dershowitz called what Stormy Daniels did the definition of extortion and it’s clear what Trump was doing was protecting his family, himself, his brand and the candidacy from that extortion.
“That is absolute classic extortion and it’s shocking that the special counsel looking into this, has a broad mandate, he described it very broadly, isn’t looking into extortion committed by at least the porn star (Stormy Daniels) whose lawyer (Michael Avenatti) obviously approached the candidate or the candidates people and threatened exposure,” he said.
“It’s clear that they were paying off an extortion in order to prevent these issues from coming for multiple reasons. To protect his family, to protect his brand, possibly to influence the campaign,” Dershowitz added.
Continue reading at realclearpolitics.com
