Liberal law professor Alan Dershowitz will be one of the people on President Donald Trump's legal team. Although is role is limited, Dershowitz made it very clear that his responsibility will be to demonstrate that the Democrats' articles of impeachment fail to meet the Constitutional requirements.
"My role is limited. I am only going to appear on behalf of the Constitution, making the arguments against impeachment based on the Constitution," Dershowitz told CNN's Michael Smerconish. "I'm not part of the strategic legal team. I won't be involved in the debate over whether there are witnesses or no witnesses or whether or not facts come out one way or another."
The Harvard Law professor said he has played a similar role in other cases and cited his expertise in the area. Specifically, Dershowitz has written three books and roughly 25 articles on the impeachment clauses of the Constitution.
"I will appear on Friday, make my argument to the Senate about the Constitutional reasons why these two articles of impeachment don't satisfy the criteria and then I'll answer questions from the senators but that will be the extent of my role," he said. "I am clearly on the side of opposing impeachment. No ambiguity about that but I have a limited role to play and that was in agreement with the president and others."
Remember: the House decided on two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump. The first one is for abuse of power and the second is for obstruction of justice.
Under the Constitution, the House of Representatives has the sole power to impeach and the Senate has the sole power to try all impeachments. In order for articles of impeachment to be valid, they have to fall under "treasons, bribes and high crimes and misdemeanors." The two articles the House passed don't fall into any of those categories.
Alan Dershowitz: "I'm an advocate, not a witness. And I'm advocating against impeachment." pic.twitter.com/bBVlWCLmvL
— The Hill (@thehill) January 19, 2020