Perspective From A Brilliant Legal Mind

On Monday, The Washington Times posted Alan Dershowitz’s response to the January 6th Committee’s final report. The Committee voted unanimously Monday to refer four charges to the Justice Department for prosecution: inciting the attack on the Capitol, obstructing an official proceeding of Congress, conspiracy to defraud the government, and making false statements on fake presidential electors. That is not a surprise considering that the Committee purposefully looked at only one side of the evidence and included only people who were out to destroy President Trump. Alan Dershowitz’s reaction was interesting in that he relied on the law as the basis for his statement–something the Committee chose not to do.

The article reports:

According to Mr. Dershowitz, the panel operated against the spirit of one of only two civil-liberties provisions in the original Constitution, before the Bill of Rights was added — a ban on “bills of attainder.”

That provision banned Congress from passing indictments of unpopular people by name.

…Mr. Dershowitz, a liberals who twice voted against Mr. Trump but has become a vocal critic of liberal attacks on him, suggested that “the Justice Department should reprimand Congress for even trying to suggest who should be prosecuted.”

He acknowledged, though, that the Justice Department under President Biden would likely not do that.

“I don’t expect it to happen. I would hope it would happen. I do expect that they won’t take it seriously,” he said before outlining what he thought a properly operating non-political Justice Department would do.

“Don’t tell us who to investigate and who to prosecute. You had a kangaroo hearing. One-sided. You didn’t allow a cross-examination. You didn’t allow any adverse witnesses, so don’t expect us to take seriously any recommendations you make about prosecution. The American public should make no conclusions based on this one-sided recommendation and it should ignore it as well,” Mr. Dershowitz said.

It’s “worthless. It’s a worthless piece of paper,” he added.

It’s a shame that taxpayer money was spent on this sham committee. There are a lot of unanswered questions about January 6th (such as the involvement by the FBI, why Speaker Pelosi refused extra security, etc.) that should be explored, but this committee worked very hard not to investigate those questions.