At first glance, you must wonder if attorney Alan Dershowitz is just trying to get back into the elite lefty social scene from which he’s been ostracized since the 2016 election. Dershowitz, a staunch supporter of the Democratic Party, has been, by his admission, disinvited from social gatherings of society’s upper crusts for his defenses of Donald Trump on a host of issues, ranging from Russian collusion to the January 6 riot. The liberal attorney has been apt to destroy the legal arguments his colleagues have constructed against Trump, which has infuriated progressives for years. He’s not one to shy away from telling these people they’re incorrect right to their faces—and he has. So, don't get too upset when you read headlines that Dershowitz says there’s enough to indict Trump after the FBI’s August 8 raid of Mar-a-Lago. It’s partially an academic exercise—he says that any DC grand jury would do so—but also gave a warning for the Biden Justice Department.
He is correct that any grand jury from any jurisdiction that’s a power base for liberal America would indict Trump. Yet, the two tests he offers probably won’t earn him a re-invitation back into the liberal social scene he was once a staple of in past years. He provides the Nixon/Clinton tests and notes that the Justice Department fails both; therefore, they should steer clear of the indictment circus, which is the second act of the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago sacking story (via NY Post):
Alan Dershowitz said there was currently enough evidence to indict former president Trump based on his reading of the highly redacted FBI affidavit.
“Any grand jury in DC would indict Trump on the evidence that he had classified material in violation of various statutes,” Dershowitz, 83, told The Post by phone Saturday — but cautioned the Department of Justice from pursing the case.
The Harvard law professor cited the failure of the probe to meet what he called the Nixon and Clinton tests, the former being the need to establish broad bipartisan support, and the latter being a demonstration that Trump’s conduct is materially worse than Hillary Clinton’s own past mishandling of classified information.
Getting a search warrant is easy to do, and a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich so that is why we need prosecutorial discretion,” said Dershowitz, a Trump ally and part of the former president’s defense team during his first impeachment trial.
Dershowitz said public anger should be directed not at Judge Reinhart for signing off on the search, but rather Attorney General Merrick Garland for seeking the warrant in the first place.
“By the DOJ’s own regulations, you don’t seek a search warrant unless that’s the only way you can get the material,” Dershowitz said.
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Fox News host Tucker Carlson has said that we should be prepared for Trump to be indicted. Whether that stops him from running in 2024 is another issue. It’s peculiar how the FBI has been gunning for Trump for almost a decade and provided a solid defense against anything they throw at him. Trump declassified documents and took copies of them to Mar-a-Lago, where they were secured by his staff and the Secret Service detail protecting the residence. The president is the ultimate authority on the declassification of materials. The Presidential Records Act is not a criminal statute. It boils down to some folks not being happy that some records weren’t returned, so like their operation to manufacture fake evidence to secure FISA spy warrants on Trump campaign officials, the DOJ fabricated some legalese to raid Trump’s home. Criminal intent should have been mentioned somewhere in the affidavit—the parts we could read which were few and far between—but it was absent. Also, what happened to the hilariously fake nuclear secrets allegation that was supposedly one of the reasons why the FBI had to ransack the home?
There is no bipartisan support for indicting Trump and being that he was the president and had the authority to declassify anything, it fails the Clinton test spectacularly. Since she destroyed 33,000 emails under federal subpoena, government Blackberries, and established a communications system that was unauthorized and unsecured to avoid the very record-keeping regulations we’re being told that is so essential regarding enforcement that we needed to raid a former president’s home. Hillary transmitted classified information through that unsecured email server. She reportedly had staff alter classification markers on sensitive documents. And then, she wiped the servers clean.
If anything, Hillary should have been indicted for mishandling classified information. Trump cannot be charged with that violation, nor any president, since they occupied an office that Hillary will never set foot in her lifetime.
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