Tag Archives: Alan Dershowitz

Alan Dershowitz Gets It Right

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On Wednesday, Alan Dershowitz posted an article at The Gatestone Institute website titled, “Justice Requires Fair Procedures.” As you read the highlights of this article, keep in mind that Alan Dershowitz is a life-long Democrat.

The article notes:

  • Justice, justice you shall pursue,” the Bible commands (Deuteronomy 16:20); and that, in doing justice, one must not “recognize faces.”
  • The late US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter once observed that the history of liberty is largely a history of procedural fairness. Our constitution embodies that history by reading “the due process of law.”
  • Lately, however, many so-called progressives have been willing to ignore procedural safeguards and due process in their campaign to get former President Donald Trump — to misuse the law in an effort to prevent the leading Republican candidate from running against the incumbent candidate for president. In doing so, they are violating the second principle of justice: “Do not recognize faces.” That commandment is the basis for the blindfolded statute of justice.
  • Some progressives who would ignore procedural safeguards to get Trump acknowledge that this is because they regard him as especially dangerous and therefore undeserving of due process. Special injustice for an unjust man!
  • Injustice, once practiced against an unjust person, will serve as precedent for deploying it against just persons.

This is one of the major points in the article:

Some progressives who would ignore procedural safeguards to get Trump acknowledge that this is because they regard him as especially dangerous and therefore undeserving of due process. Special injustice for an unjust man!

But in our system of law, which is based on precedent, there is no such thing as special injustice. Injustice, once practiced against an unjust person, will serve as precedent for deploying it against just persons. As H.L. Menken once observed:

“The trouble about fighting for human freedom is that you have to spend so much of your life defending sons of bitches; for oppressive laws are always aimed at them originally, and oppression must be stopped in the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”

So, whatever one thinks of Trump, everyone who cares about liberty for all must oppose the weaponization of laws and procedures that are aimed at him, lest the weapons be turned on us.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. Attorney Dershowitz makes some very important points about what is being done to the principles of justice in America right now.

When The Shoe Is On The Other Foot

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When Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House, she did a number of things that set precedents for the future. She removed Republicans from committees, something that in the past had only been done by the party involved. She refused to allow some Republicans on the January 6th committee, again setting a precedent. Well, some of the precedents set by the January 6th committee are about to come back to haunt the Democrats.

On Sunday Just the News reported:

The precedent set by the House Jan. 6th Select Committee in obtaining relevant documents as evidence against former President Donald Trump and issuing subpoenas for their investigation could be a boon for Republicans in the congressional probe into the Biden family’s overseas business dealings.

The Jan. 6 panel demonstrated that it could conduct oversight and gain access to evidence and witnesses even as the Justice Department conducted a sprawling criminal probe into the same figures and issues, and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer told Just the News he plans to ride those precedents.

“They set a lot of precedent during that Jan. 6 committee that I think they’re gonna regret with respect to this Biden investigation,” he told the Just the News, No Noise television show.

Comer and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan are currently investigating President Joe Biden’s possible involvement in Hunter’s foreign business deals. Biden has repeatedly said he had no knowledge or involvement with his son’s businesses, but documents and testimony given to the committee call those denials into question.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed David Weiss, U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware, to special counsel on Friday. Weiss has been leading the investigation since 2019.

Just on the basis of what has come out in the press, how could anyone investigate Hunter Biden for four years and not come up with anything?

The article notes:

Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz told Just the News that making Weiss a special counsel will strengthen the congressional investigation into the extent of Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings.

“I think it should increase the power of Congress to look into this,” he said during an interview on Friday. “I think it shows that there is still room for more investigation, and that Congress can play an important role in getting to the bottom of that.”

He noted that Congress has a “constitutional power to check and balance the executive and so the fact that there’s an ongoing investigation should not be an absolute barrier for Congress to do its job.”

Dershowitz said that Congress can insist on “subpoenaing prosecutors and then if they refuse, they can be held in contempt and it could go to the courts and we’ll see how the courts decide it.”

Please follow the link to read the entire article. If the Democrats choose to change the rules, the Republicans should embrace the change!

Tampering With Evidence?

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The ongoing indictments of President Trump are getting a bit ridiculous. I am waiting to see if the government gets a search warrant to go to Mar-a-Lago to see if he has torn the tags off of his mattress. All the current indictments are doing is illustrating (for anyone who is actually paying attention) the two-tiered justice system. Now there are some questions about evidence tampering in the January 6th case against President Trump.

On Friday, Breitbart posted an article quoting Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz on some aspects of the latest indictment.

The article reports:

Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz says that under his own “fraud” standard, Special Counsel Jack Smith could be indicted for omitting a key portion of then-President Donald Trump’s speech in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021.

The indictment charges Trump with four counts, including “conspiracy to defraud the United States.” But in a portion recounting Trump’s speech at the “Stop the Steal” rally, Smith repeats the errors made by House Democrats in Trump’s second impeachment trial: he focuses on Trump’s use of the phrase “fight like hell,” and omits a sentence highlighted by Trump’s defense team: “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

Dershowitz told the Megyn Kelly Show podcast on Friday that by his own standard, Smith could be charged with fraud, because of his omission of Trump’s “peaceful” rhetoric.

“Under the indictment itself, Jack Smith could be himself indicted. He told a direct lie in this indictment. He purported to describe the speech that President Trump made on January 6th. And he left out the key words, when President Trump said, ‘I want you to demonstrate peacefully and patriotically. You know, a lie by omission, under the law, can be as serious as a lie by commission.”

The fact that Smith repeated the error of the House impeachment managers would appear deliberate, because these phrases were the crux of Trump’s Senate trial. Trump’s lawyers even played footage of Democrats using similar “fight” rhetoric, to show its common usage.

Remember–only the political left is allowed to use the word “fight.”

A Get-Out-The-Popcorn Moment

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On Sunday, The Daily Wire posted an article with an interesting twist of the indictment of President Trump.

The article reports:

Leaked details about Donald Trump‘s indictment are grounds for criminal charges, a top official from the former president’s administration said on Sunday.

John Ratcliffe, a former U.S. congressman and federal prosecutor who served as Trump’s final director of national intelligence, reacted to reports that Trump faces around 30 counts related to business fraud as part of the investigation led by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

“The only felony of which we can be certain to come out of this Alvin Bragg prosecution in New York is the felony committed either by DA Bragg himself or someone on the grand jury that he’s using for this perversion of our justice system,” Ratcliffe told “Sunday Morning Futures” anchor Maria Bartiromo.

“The accused, Donald Trump, and his lawyers, don’t know what’s in this sealed indictment. But for the past, what? Seventy-two hours, the American public has been discussing supposedly 30 or 34 felony counts,” he added. “Leaking grand jury information is a felony. And so the only people capable of that would be Alvin Bragg’s team or members of the grand jury itself.”

…Ratcliffe isn’t the only person saying there could have been criminal leaks. Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz shared a similar view during an appearance on OANN, noting that such a violation of New York penal law could warrant up to five years behind bars.

Are we about to see another situation where Lady Justice takes her blindfold off? At what point do Americans wake up to the fact that the principle of ‘equal justice under the law’ supposedly guaranteed by our Constitution has been thrown under the bus?

Perspective From A Brilliant Legal Mind

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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.

Creating A Police State

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John Solomon at Just the News is one of the few investigative reporters left. On Tuesday he posted an article about the decisions that led up to the raid on Mar-a-Lago. One of the things he reports on was the role that the Biden White House played in the raid.

The article reports:

Long before it professed no prior knowledge of the raid on Donald Trump’s estate, the Biden White House worked directly with the Justice Department and National Archives to instigate the criminal probe into alleged mishandling of documents, allowing the FBI to review evidence retrieved from Mar-a-Lago this spring and eliminating the 45th president’s claims to executive privilege, according to contemporaneous government documents reviewed by Just the News.

The memos show then-White House Deputy Counsel Jonathan Su was engaged in conversations with the FBI, DOJ and National Archives as early as April, shortly after 15 boxes of classified and other materials were voluntarily returned to the federal historical agency from Trump’s Florida home.

By May, Su conveyed to the Archives that President Joe Biden would not object to waiving his predecessor’s claims to executive privilege, a decision that opened the door for DOJ to get a grand jury to issue a subpoena compelling Trump to turn over any remaining materials he possessed from his presidency.

The article contains information about the decision to waive executive privilege in the case of President Trump. I still believe this is about the deep state’s concern that President Trump has documents that will incriminate the FBI and DOJ in the Russia probe.

The article includes some comments by Alan Dershowitz, the famed Harvard law professor emeritus and lifelong Democrat, about the waiving of executive privilege:

“I was very surprised,” Dershowitz said after reading the text of Wall’s letter. “The current president should not be able to waive the executive privilege of a predecessor, without the consent of the former president. Otherwise, [privilege] means nothing. What president will ever discuss anything in private if he knows the man who beat him can and will disclose it.”

While some courts have upheld the notion of a successor president waiving privilege for a predecessor, Dershowitz said the matter remains to be decided definitively by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. The evidence is there that the Biden White House used the Department of Justice and the FBI as political weapons. The question is, “Is there anyone in Congress with the integrity to do anything about it?”

What Constitution?

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In the not so distant past, even when Democrats and Republicans disagreed, both parties attempted to follow the guidelines of the U.S. Constitution. It seem as though that has changed in recent years. Alan Dershowitz is a well-known Democrat who has been called out by his party more than once for his apolitical support of the U.S. Constitution. On Tuesday, he posted an article at The Epoch Times about the arrest of Peter Navarro.

The article notes:

The indictment of Peter Navarro for contempt of Congress violates several provisions of the Constitution and should be dismissed. Navarro has a strong claim of executive privilege that should be decided by the courts before any indictment can lawfully issue.

Either the Justice Department or Congress should seek a judicial ruling that Navarro’s claim of executive privilege is invalid. If the court rules that it is invalid and orders him to respond to the congressional subpoena, Navarro should have an opportunity to comply. If he fails to comply with a judicial order, he can either be indicted or held in contempt by the court. But absent a judicial order, he cannot lawfully be indicted for invoking executive privilege and refusing to reveal arguably privileged material just because a committee of Congress, controlled by Democrats, has voted that he should. It is not enough to allow him to appeal after the fact, because information, once revealed, cannot be erased. He is obliged to claim privilege now and refuse to respond. That is not a crime. It is the constitutionally correct action.

Navarro’s indictment violates several key constitutional rights, including due process, fair warning and executive privilege. It also violates the separation of powers, under which the courts have the authority to resolve conflicts between the legislative and executive branches over claims of executive privilege in response to legislative subpoenas. Due process and fair warning require that these issues first be resolved by the courts before an indictment can be issued.

Please follow the link to the article for further details.

The bottom line here is simple. The Democrats need something to run on in the mid-term elections. They have chosen January 6th, stating that the events of that day were a threat to our Democracy. First of all, we are a representative republic–not a Democracy. Second of all, the protesters were not armed. If you are going to have an insurrection, you should probably carry a weapon. Two women died that day at the hands of the Capitol police–one shot and one gassed and beaten to death (article here). I don’t think the protesters were the problem.

Testing The First Amendment

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On Wednesday The Informed American posted an article about Mike Lindell’s fight to preserve his First Amendment rights.

The article reports:

Do you want to know what exactly the First Amendment protects? When you get right down to the granular level? Unpopular speech.

It protects the drunk in the bar when he talks crap about everyone that walks in. It protects that guy at the football game who is rooting for the other team. It protects when you have a conservative that is trying to tell you the truth about how the election was rigged and stolen, and the liberals among us want to silence them.

Now, we all know one of the quickest ways to get someone to shut up is to sue them, especially if you think they have nobody backing their play…except this one does…

This is fantastic! Mike Lindell is getting advice from one of America’s greatest legal minds, so he can do battle with the evil empire known as Dominion. The same Dominion that robbed you and I of true democracy.

Alan Dershowitz is reportedly coming to the aid of Mike Lindell, giving him advice for the upcoming lawsuit. I am EXTREMELY excited about this, because Dershowitz is a legal juggernaut.

Armed with Dersh, I am pretty sure Mike Lindell will win his defamation suit, and he might just be able to turn the tide against Dominion.

To clarify, Alan Dershowitz has stated that he is playing a limited, advisory role in the lawsuit. He has stated that he is simply offering advice on the First Amendment issues involved in the lawsuit. I think Alan Dershowitz’s advice in any capacity would be invaluable.

Over The Edge

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I know that there are some rational Democrats out there. Alan Dershowitz is one, and I am sure there are a few others. However, there are enough nuts running around out there to keep a colony of squirrels fed for a million winters!

Katie Pavlich posted an article at Townhall today about some events at a recent townhall meeting held by Michigan Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. I realize that Congresswoman Tlaib may not fully understand how our government works, but I think what went on at that meeting was unacceptable.

The article reports:

During a town hall meeting with constituents in Michigan this week, Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib agreed that U.S. Marshals should “hunt down” White House officials and remove them from office if they “refuse to leave power.” This includes President Trump.

The idea was suggested by a man questioning Tlaib, who nodded in agreement, and then admitted Democrats on Capitol Hill have been having a discussion about who can arrest administration officials and where they could be held.

“This is the last caucus conversation we’ve had. Did you know this is really unprecedented? This is the worst time we’ve ever had a situation like this. They’re trying to figure out, no joke, is it the DC police that goes and gets them?” Tlaib said. “Where do we hold them? Like, I’m not in those kinds of conversations but I’m asking, what happens?”

“I’m telling you, they’re trying to be like, ‘Well where are we going put them? Where are we going to hold…'” she continued, suggesting they can be held in Detroit. “What happens when they don’t comply? The fact of the matter is we held Barr and Secretary Ross from Commerce, the Secretary of Commerce, in contempt. Well, what happens if they continue to not comply?”

Note that there is no description of whatever it is these people have done to deserve arrest. Also note that there never seems to be a definitive list of crimes that President Trump is supposed to have committed. Have we reached the point where if you disagree with me and I am in power I can have you arrested? This is frightening.

Bringing Justice In The Midst Of A Tangled Web

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On Wednesday, Forbes posted an article about financier Jeffrey Epstein. Mr. Epstein was charged with sex crimes in Florida and avoided trial with a plea deal that seemed very lenient for the charges involved. He was arrested Saturday in New York City and charged with sex trafficking minors. He is expected to appear in court in New York on Monday.

The article reports:

A federal appeals court Wednesday ordered that 167 documents in a lawsuit that alleges famously well-connected financier Jeffrey Epstein participated in a sex-trafficking ring should be unsealed—and that many of his powerful friends could be named.

  • In its 27-page decision, the court cited the public’s right to access the case information outweighed the privacy of certain individuals, “including numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well‐known Prime Minister, and other world leaders.” 
  • Virginia Guiffre (now Roberts) filed the lawsuit against Ghislane Maxwell, alleging that she had used her as part of a sex trafficking network of underage girls to Epstein and a number of his famous friends, including his lawyer Alan Dershowitz and Prince Andrew. Both men denied the accusations.
  • Dershowitz has supported unsealing the documents, according to the Daily Beast.
  • The documents will not be immediately available, as anonymous individuals involved in the case have two weeks to file appeals.
  • The court advised the documents be read carefully. “We therefore urge the media to exercise restraint in covering potentially defamatory allegations, and we caution the public to read such accounts with discernment,” wrote the court in its decision.

In January 2015, The U.K. Daily Mail posted some of the flight logs from the “Lolita Express’ (the nickname of Epstein’s airplane that he used to transport people and underage girls to his private island. Please follow the link to the article to read the names. Because of those names, I would be very surprised if the court documents are actually unsealed. Mr. Epstein had connections in high places, which allowed him to avoid the punishment in Florida that an ordinary person would have received. It will be interesting to see if he has those same connections in New York City.

 

This Is Dangerous And Those Responsible Need To Be Held Accountable

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Last Thursday Breitbart posted a list of “305 Acts of Violence and Harassment Against Trump Supporters.” I don’t care what you think of President Trump or what you think of anything he has done, this is not acceptable. Some of the political left is using the argument that ‘he started it’ and then naming some outrageous statement by the President. However, that is no excuse–President Trump is not assaulting people, throwing drinks at them, harassing them in public places or stealing or destroying their property. Some of his opponents are.

Here are only the top 25 items on the list:

  1. July 10, 2018: Fox News Reporter Harassed, Threatened And Forced To Leave Supreme Court By Leftist Mob
  2. July 9, 2018: Far-left blog Talking Points Memo mocks Stephen Miller over report of confrontation with bartender.
  3. July 9, 2018: Trump senior aide Stephen Miller harassed on street by angry bartender.
  4. July 9, 2018: Motorists scream curse words at Sean Spicer in his yard.
  5. July 9, 2018: Trump senior aide Kellyanne Conway harassed in grocery store
  6. July 9, 2018: Anti-Trump activists vandalize New York DHS office
  7. July 8, 2018: LISTEN: Idaho GOP Rep. Receives Threatening Voicemails, Emails Because of This Facebook Post
  8. July 8, 2018: Longtime Hillary Clinton aide publishes contact information about bookstore owner who stopped the harassment of Steve Bannon, Reines’s  obvious goal is to see the bookstore owner harassed.
  9. July 8, 2018: Far-left Daily Beast writer defends public harassment of Steve Bannon
  10. July 7, 2018: Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) menaced outside restaurant. We know where you live!
  11. July 7, 2018:Steve Bannon harassed at bookstore; police called
  12. July 7, 2018: Left-wing AntiFa terrorists attack peaceful Tommy Robinson supporters in San Francisco
  13. July 7, 2018: New York Times editorial calls for Dems to “take a page from The Godfather” to “go to the mattresses” to stop Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.
  14. July 6, 2018: CNN analyst justifies violence against Trump supporters
  15. July 6, 2018:  Long Island Man Threatened to Kill Supporters of Republican Congressman, Trump: Police
  16. July 6, 2018: Florida man attacked over Trump flag in yard.
  17. July 6, 2018: Woman threatens to stab Alan Dershowitz in heart.
  18. July 5, 2018: Founder of #WalkAway campaign refused service at camera store.
  19. July 5, 2018: Trump supporter wearing Make America Great Again hat allegedly assaulted in burger joint (video at link).
  20. July 3, 2018: Left-wing Catholic calls for sending Trump supporters to the guillotine
  21. July 3, 2018: Nebraska GOP office vandalized.
  22. July 3, 2018: EPA head Scott Pruitt harassed at restaurant.
  23. July 2, 2018: MAGA hat wearer harassed at seafood restaurant
  24. July 2, 2018: Mother of cancer survivor harassed online for thanking Eric Trump for $16 million in St. Jude support
  25. July 2, 2018: Cher accuses ICE of “Gestapo tactics.”

At some point we all need to get along. We are never going to agree on everything. The press is playing a large role in this–they have been running around with their hair on fire since the 2016 election. The press has refused to report on much of this and refused to condemn on what it has reported. The left political spin is that any violence is President Trump’s fault because he is so over the top. The actual truth is that the deep state is feeling backed into a corner and is reacting like a cornered animal. Unfortunately, until the American voters wake up and realize that the press is manipulating them, we will probably see more of this.

There Seems To Be A Definite Lack Of Transparency Here

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Most of the information we have about the Mueller investigation comes from strategic leaks from those working for Robert Mueller. Other than that, we really don’t know much. Well, it seems that the investigation has not revealed some important items to those overseeing the investigation.

Yesterday John Solomon posted an article at The Hill that raises questions about certain aspects of the Mueller investigation.

The article reports:

But there’s one episode even Mueller’s former law enforcement comrades — and independent ethicists — acknowledge raises legitimate legal issues and a possible conflict of interest in his overseeing the Russia election probe.

In 2009, when Mueller ran the FBI, the bureau asked Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to spend millions of his own dollars funding an FBI-supervised operation to rescue a retired FBI agent, Robert Levinson, captured in Iran while working for the CIA in 2007.

Yes, that’s the same Deripaska who has surfaced in Mueller’s current investigation and who was recently sanctioned by the Trump administration.

The lesson here is simply–whichever side of the political aisle or the investigation you sit on, it pays to be transparent. Mueller has been anything but transparent.

The article concludes with several legal opinions on the matter:

Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz told me he believes Mueller has a conflict of interest because his FBI previously accepted financial help from a Russian that is, at the very least, a witness in the current probe.

“The real question becomes whether it was proper to leave [Deripaska] out of the Manafort indictment, and whether that omission was to avoid the kind of transparency that is really required by the law,” Dershowitz said.

Melanie Sloan, a former Clinton Justice Department lawyer and longtime ethics watchdog, told me a “far more significant issue” is whether the earlier FBI operation was even legal: “It’s possible the bureau’s arrangement with Mr. Deripaska violated the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits the government from accepting voluntary services.”   

George Washington University constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley agreed: “If the operation with Deripaska contravened federal law, this figure could be viewed as a potential embarrassment for Mueller. The question is whether he could implicate Mueller in an impropriety.”

Now that sources have unmasked the Deripaska story, time will tell whether the courts, Justice, Congress or a defendant formally questions if Mueller is conflicted.

In the meantime, the episode highlights an oft-forgotten truism: The cat-and-mouse maneuvers between Moscow and Washington are often portrayed in black-and-white terms. But the truth is, the relationship is enveloped in many shades of gray.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. There is a lot of information there that needs to be in the public domain.

Alan Dershowitz Is My New Hero

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Yesterday The Washington Examiner posted some comments by Attorney Alan Dershowitz regarding the raid on the offices of Michael Cohen, the personal attorney of President Trump.

The article reports:

Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz warned Monday that special counsel Robert Mueller’s decision to raid President Trump’s personal lawyer’s office is an assault on the privileged lawyer-client relationship.

Dershowitz said on Fox News that he believes the decision to raid Michael Cohen’s office would be a sign that Mueller is trying to turn Cohen against Trump.

“This may be an attempt to squeeze Cohen,” he said. “He’s the lawyer, he’s the guy who knows all the facts about Donald Trump, and to get him to turn against his client.”

“This is a very dangerous day today for lawyer-client relations,” he added.

Dershowitz, who has drawn the ire of Democrats for defending Trump, said Mueller’s move is also dangerous because it gives the FBI the option of deciding what information seized from Cohen to pursue.

“I tell [clients] on my word of honor that what you tell me is sacrosanct,” he said. “And now they say, just based on probable cause … they can burst into the office, grab all the computers, and then give it to another FBI agent and say, ‘You’re the firewall. We want you now to read all these confidential communications, tell us which ones we can get and which ones we can’t get.'”

“If this were Hillary Clinton being investigated and they went into her lawyer’s office, the ACLU would be on every television station in America, jumping up and down,” he added.

“The deafening silence from the ACLU and civil libertarians about the intrusion into the lawyer-client confidentiality is really appalling,” Dershowitz said.

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution says:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,[a] against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

I firmly believe that the raids conducted in coordination with the Special Prosecutor‘s Investigation were totally unconstitutional. This sets a very bad precedence for the future. It is also a very strong indication of the total politicization of the FBI and DOJ during the past administration.

Common Sense From Alan Dershowitz

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Alan Dershowitz is a civil liberties attorney whose politics are generally left of center. He loves America, he loves the U.S. Constitution, and he is concerned about the direction in which the country is headed–not because of President Trump, but because of the intensity of the attacks on President Trump.

Attorney Dershowitz was recently interviewed by CBS News. Please follow the link and read the entire interview. It is very insightful.

Here are some highlights from that interview.

Dershowitz spoke to CBS 11 political reporter Jack Fink about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to affect the outcome of the 2016 election.

“I think the investigation should end and I think the Congress should appoint a special non-partisan commission,” said Dershowitz. He said he thinks a Congressional committee would be too partisan.

“That’s the way it’s done in other western democracies,” he continued. “They don’t appoint a special counsel and tell them to ‘Get that guy…’ that’s what they did in the Soviet Union. Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the KGB said to Stalin, ‘Show me the man, and I’ll find you the crime!’” That’s what special counsel does.”

Dershowitz was quick to point out that he was not making a direct correlation between the United States and the former Soviet Union. “I’m not comparing obviously the Soviet Union and the United States. We have structural protections in our Bill Of Rights but it’s going down the wrong direction.”

“The issue of criminalization [of political differences] has not been subject to rational discourse,” said Dershowitz. “Democrats hate when they politicize and criminalize political differences against Democrats… when they did it with Bill Clinton. Republicans hate when they do it against their people… President Trump. But each one supports it when they’re against their enemies and partisanship prevails over principle. It’s very hard to have a reasonable discussion.”

Until politicians on both sides of the aisle begin to put the interests of the country above their political interests and the interests of their particular political party, I don’t think any reasonable discussion will be possible.

Attorney Dershowitz added:

Dershowitz said that citizens should fear the direction of this investigation for their own sake. He warned that today criminalization of political differences appears – now – to only affect presidents and political leaders. “Tomorrow it can affect you and me. If you give the prosecutor the ability to stretch the criminal law to fit a target, it’s very dangerous.”

Dershowitz said that special counsels are not the right way to approach criminal justice. “When you appoint a special counsel you give them targets and you say, ‘You better get that guy or the people around him…and we’re going to give you tens of millions of dollars. And if you come up empty handed you’re a failure.’”

Dershowitz said that if an ordinary prosecutor goes months without finding a crime then “that’s great, no… there have been no crimes committed.” He says not so with a special counsel. “Special Counsel always has the goal of ‘getting the people.’ They’re going to find crimes, or they’re going to manufacture crimes or they’re going to stretch the criminal law to fit the ‘crimes’ because they’re not going to come away empty handed.”

Dershowitz was asked what he thinks should happen now. Should Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein curtail the investigation? “I think Rod Rosenstein needs to say to the special counsel, ‘Do not investigate the private finances of the president before he became president; do not investigate his relatives; do not investigate his sex life.’ Don’t do – to President Trump – what Ken Starr did to President Clinton,” said Dershowitz . “It started with Whitewater and ended up with a blue dress. That’s not the appropriate way a special counsel should operate.”

I don’t agree with Alan Dershowitz on much, but in this case he is totally right.

The Things Many Of Us Didn’t Know

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You can’t change history, and ‘what if’s’ are somewhat useless, but on February 4th, Larry Elder posted a very interesting article in the Toronto Sun. The article reveals one way the media bias in America has impacted our nation.

The article is titled, “Had the ‘news’ media done its job, Obama would not have become president.” That is a very interesting thought. I somewhat disagree in that I believe the media considered it their job to discredit anyone who said anything negative about then Senator Obama and acted accordingly–so in their minds they were doing their job.

The article reports the first obvious example of the media omitting something that might have been relevant:

A photojournalist withheld publication of a 2005 photograph of a smiling then-Sen. Barack Obama with a beaming Louis Farrakhan, the anti-Semitic, anti-white leader of the Nation of Islam.

The occasion was a meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus. The photographer, Askia Muhammad, said that almost immediately after he took the picture a CBC staffer called and said, “We have to have the picture back.”

Muhammad later surrendered the disk with the photo to Farrakhan’s chief of staff. “I gave the picture up at the time and basically swore secrecy,” Muhammad said in an interview with the Trice Edney News Wire. “But after the (presidential) nomination was secured and all the way up until the inauguration; then for eight years after he was President, it was kept under cover.”

…Harvard Law School professor emeritus and lifelong liberal Alan Dershowitz says he would not have campaigned for Obama had he been aware of this photograph. Dershowitz says: “Louis Farrakhan is a virulent anti-Semite. He’s called Judaism a ‘gutter religion.’ He’s anti-American. He is a horrible, horrible human being.

Example number two:

Obama’s longtime association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ would likely have derailed his candidacy had media pounced on this as they did the Trump “Access Hollywood” tape. But for Fox News’ coverage of Wright and the videotapes of his fiery sermons, the other major media would have avoided or downplayed Obama’s 20-year association with a pastor who gave fiery sermons critical of America and who had a longtime friendship with Farrakhan.

Ezra Klein, then with The Washington Post, set up a private internet forum he called JournoList, which served as an online gathering place for several hundred like-minded (aka liberal) reporters. When the Jeremiah Wright scandal broke, several reporters on the “J-List” literally schemed of ways to deflect attention from the scandal.

Not an encouraging picture of a supposedly unbiased media.

The third example:

Then there’s the Los Angeles Times, which, to this day, has not and will not publish even a transcript of the “Khalidi tapes.” Rashid Khalidi, an Obama friend and a University of Chicago Palestinian-American professor of Middle East studies, had a going-away party to celebrate his new post at Columbia University. Someone gave the Los Angeles Times a videotape of this 2003 event that Obama attended, where he reminisced about their friendship in a tribute to the professor.

Khalidi was an outspoken supporter of Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. But what he said and what others said at this farewell party, we will never know. Were attendees bashing Israel? Did Obama bash Israel? The Times says it promised the unnamed source who provided the videotape not to air or reproduce the tape. The paper, whose editorial board endorsed Obama, claims it simply kept its promise to a source. If a tape could have ended Trump’s 2016 campaign, would the LA Times, whose editorial board twice endorsed Obama and considered Trump a danger to the world, have sat on it?

Whether or not this information would have mattered to the voters is not clear. What is clear is that each one of these events was an indication of the policies Senator Obama would embrace as President. Under President Obama we had eight years of very strained relationships with a number of our allies–the Churchill bust that was sent back to England, and the horrific treatment of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during one of his visits when he was ignored then asked to leave by the back door of the White House are just two examples.

Under President Trump our relationship with Israel and Britain have improved. We are regaining the respect that our country lost under President Obama. We are no longer ‘leading from behind’ (which makes no sense anyway), but taking our place in the family of nations as a supporter of freedom and a voice for the exploited.

The Part Of The Story I Hadn’t Heard

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The Daily Caller posted an article yesterday about the recent bombing of a Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres) ( MSF) hospital in Afghanistan. Evidently, all was not as it seemed to be at the time.

The article reports:

International law experts are blasting Doctors Without Borders for forcibly removing civilian patients from the aid group’s Kunduz, Afghanistan, hospital and replacing them with wounded Taliban fighters when the city fell to the rebel control in late September.

Alan Dershowitz, an acclaimed Harvard constitutional lawyer and authority in international law, said that he was not surprised that the group, known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, favored Taliban fighters over civilian patients, telling The Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview that he regards Doctors Without Borders as “Doctors Without Morals.”

Dershowitz charged the group with having a long history of anti-Western political stances and of not being neutral. He says MSF “is a heavily ideological organization that often favors radical groups over Western democracies and is highly politicized.”

Now this makes sense. One of the strategies in the war against Israel is for the Arabs to place rocket launchers and store ammunition in hospitals and civilian homes. Then they scream that the Israelis are targeting hospitals and civilian homes. This is a very similar situation. Our troops bombed a Taliban center. There were no civilian patients–they had already been kicked out to make room for Taliban soldiers.

The article further explains:

Yet MSF itself may have violated a whole host of humanitarian laws by its own admission that Kunduz hospital administrators agreed to discharge Afghan civilian patients at the behest of Taliban officials and replace them with wounded rebel soldiers.

The acknowledgement was buried inside a Nov. 5 “interim” report released by MSF that traced the internal activities at their hospital leading up to the attack.

As usual when dealing with terrorists, things are not what they appear to be.

Common Sense From One Of My Favorite Liberals

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Alan Dershowitz is a Professor at Harvard University. He is a brilliant man with unassailable credentials as a political liberal. He has campaigned for President Obama twice. He posted an article in the Wall Street Journal today.

His article on the opinion page deals with the upcoming visit to America by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Professor Dershowitz states:

At bottom, this controversy is not mainly about protocol and politics—it is about the constitutional system of checks and balances and the separation of powers.

Under the Constitution, the executive and legislative branches share responsibility for making and implementing important foreign-policy decisions. Congress has a critical role to play in scrutinizing the decisions of the president when these decisions involve national security, relationships with allies and the threat of nuclear proliferation.

Whether or not Iran gets nuclear weapons should not be a partisan issue–if Iran goes nuclear, all Americans are in danger.

Professor Dershowitz continues:

Whether one agrees or disagrees with Speaker John Boehner ’s decision to invite Mr. Netanyahu or Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to accept, no legal scholar can dispute that Congress has the power to act independently of the president in matters of foreign policy. Whether any deal with Iran would technically constitute a treaty requiring Senate confirmation, it is certainly treaty-like in its impact. Moreover, the president can’t implement the deal without some action or inaction by Congress.

…Another reason members of Congress should not boycott Mr. Netanyahu’s speech is that support for Israel has always been a bipartisan issue. The decision by some members to boycott Israel’s prime minister endangers this bipartisan support. This will not only hurt Israel but will also endanger support for Democrats among pro-Israel voters. I certainly would never vote for or support a member of Congress who walked out on Israel’s prime minister.

Professor Dershowitz concludes:

Inviting a prime minister of an ally to educate Congress about a pressing foreign-policy decision is in the highest tradition of our democratic system of separation of powers and checks and balances.

This is a security issue for all Americans. Anyone in Congress who boycotts this speech should be defeated as soon as they are up for re-election.

I Hope Alan Dershowitz Is Successful In Clearing His Name

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Alan Dershowitz has been accused of having sex with one of the women involved in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Attorney Dershowitz was on the Bill Bennett show this morning and mentioned the accusation. He stated that he had made one trip to the Caribbean Island in question–with his wife and children and that nothing unseemly involving him took place.

Lately we have seen a lot of people charged with various sexual escapades–some going back many years–and there seems to be a pattern here. The accusers speak out, ruin the reputation of the person accused, there is no chance for the person accused to prove his innocence, and the professional career of the accused person is ruined. I have no idea how many of these charges are true, but it seems to me that the Duke la crosse case and the Virginia Tech case at least illustrate that there should be room for doubt.

An article posted at Yahoo News on Friday states:

In a statement provided by her lawyers, Paul Cassell and Bradley Edwards, Roberts said, “I am looking forward to vindicating my rights as an innocent victim and pursuing all available recourse. It appears that I am now being unjustly victimized again. … I’m not going to be bullied back into silence.”

Dershowitz is angry at Cassell and Edwards too, saying that they did not contact him before filing the motion and that if they had, he could have provided evidence that he had not met Roberts.

“I won’t rest until these lawyers admit they made it up,” said Dershowitz, who also vowed to have them disbarred. “It’s amazing to me that lawyers, including a former federal judge, could file something like this.” Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah, served as a federal district judge for five years. Edwards is a Florida attorney who represents crime victims.

If these charges are false, as they seem to be, the attorneys involved may regret going after Alan Dershowitz. Alan Dershowitz is a liberal, but he is a principled liberal. He has spoken out against various Democrat politicians when he felt that they were wrong. I am sure that he has made many political enemies by refusing to support the liberal agenda blindly. It would be interesting to know which of those enemies is behind these charges.

Following The Money On The Rick Perry Indictment

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Yesterday Newsbusters posted an article about the indictment of Texas Governor Rick Perry. It is not news to anyone that this indictment is politically motivated. According to Newmax,  Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax TV’s “America’s Forum” that the governor’s indictment was driven by politics and is representative of “what happens in totalitarian societies.” What also needs to be reported is the money funding the group behind the indictment.

Newsbusters reports:

Sometimes it seems like there isn’t a single political issue that a Soros-funded group isn’t involved in. Texans for Public Justice, one of the groups behind Rick Perry’s indictment charges, is part of a “progressive” coalition that has received $500,000 from liberal billionaire George Soros. 

…According to KXAN, a local NBC affiliate in Austin, Texans for Public Justice filed a complaint against Perry in court last June. 

According to an Open Society Institute press release, OSI has given $500,000 to help form a coalition that “could change the way the progressive community engages public policy in Texas.” Besides Texans for Public Justice, this coalition includes Texans Together, the Sierra Club, Texas Legal Services, La Fe Policy Research and Education Center, Public Citizen, and the Center for Public Policy. 

Even some liberals have defended Rick Perry and dismissed the indictment charges as politically motivated. Obama senior aide David Axelrod defended Perry on Twitter, tweeting that “[u]nless he was demonstrably trying to scrap the ethics unit for other than his stated reason, Perry’s indictment seems pretty sketchy,” and MSNBC called the case against the Texas governor “weak” and “fishy.” ABC, CBS and NBC have completely ignored these liberal criticisms of the indictment. 

George Soros is not an asset to the American political system.

Following The Money

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Jimmy Carter was not one of our better presidents. He was the architect of the 1979 Camp David accords, but has somehow lost his way since.

An article posted at Forbes Magazine last week reminds us:

Once upon a time, the architect of the 1979 Camp David accords had some credibility as an observer of the Middle East. Yet the depth of his anti-Israel prejudice was already on display eight-years ago when he insisted that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank “perpetrates even worse instances of apartness, or apartheid, than we witnessed even in South Africa.” His book on that subject was naturally called Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid.

Jimmy Carter has called for the recognition of Hamas’ “legitimacy as a political actor” because they represent a substantial portion of the Palestinian people. He made no suggestion that they lay down their weapons first. So what in the world is this about? Alan Dershowitz has the answer.

In a 2012 column in Israel and Stuff, Alan Dershowitz explains:

Recent disclosures of Carter’s extensive financial connections to Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi Arabia, had deeply shaken my belief in his integrity. When I was first told that he received a monetary reward in the name of Shiekh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, and kept the money, even after Harvard returned money from the same source because of its anti-Semitic history, I simply did not believe it. How could a man of such apparent integrity enrich himself with dirty money from so dirty a source?

And let there be no mistake about how dirty the Zayed Foundation is. I know because I was involved, in a small way, in helping to persuade Harvard University to return more than $2 million that the financially strapped Divinity School received from this source. Initially I was reluctant to put pressure on Harvard to turn back money for the Divinity School, but then a student at the Divinity School — Rachael Lea Fish — showed me the facts They were staggering. I was amazed that in the 21st century there were still foundations that espoused these views. The Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up – a think-tank funded by the Shiekh and run by his son – hosted speakers who called Jews “the enemies of all nations,” attributed the assassination of John Kennedy to Israel and the Mossad and the 9/11 attacks to the United States’ own military, and stated that the Holocaust was a “fable.” (They also hosted a speech by Jimmy Carter.) To its credit, Harvard turned the money back. To his discredit, Carter did not.

Jimmy Carter was, of course, aware of Harvard’s decision, since it was highly publicized. Yet he kept the money. Indeed, this is what he said in accepting the funds: “This award has special significance for me because it is named for my personal friend, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan.” Carter’s personal friend, it turns out, was an unredeemable anti-Semite and all-around bigot.

Jimmy Carter has been making anti-Semitic statements for years. That is very unfortunate. He was admittedly a horrible president, but most people felt that he was an honorable man. It is sad to find out that he is not.

 

 

President Obama And Israel

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YouTube has posted an 18 minute video American voters should watch before they vote. This is the video:

YouTube describes the video as follows:

A new, 18-minute mini-documentary follows the journey of Irina, a 23-year-old liberal, Jewish New Yorker who voted for Obama in 2008. Yet as her connection to Israel has grown, and she has learned more about the President’s policies across the Middle East and towards Israel in particular, Irina has come to realize that “when the chips are down,” the President may not “have Israel’s back” as he says.

The short film features:

Exclusive interviews with leading journalists and politicians in Israel
(Bloomberg, London Times, Jerusalem Post, etc.)

Mainstream news reports (CNN, MSNBC, ABC, BBC, etc.),

Clips from longtime Democratic supporters including: Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz Former NYC Mayor Ed Koch Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY)

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Some Surprisingly Good Logic From The Left

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Mediaite posted an article yesterday on the George Zimmerman arrest. The article was an interview that occurred on MSNBC’s hardball when guest host Michel Smerconish was interviewing Professor Alan Dershowitz on the arrest of George Zimmerman. I will admit I was rather surprised at the Professor’s comments.

The article reports Professor Dershowitz’s comments:

“Most affidavits of probable cause are very thin. This is so thin that it won’t make it past a judge on a second degree murder charge,” Dershowitz said. “There’s simply nothing in there that would justify second degree murder.”

Dershowitz said that the elements that would constitute that crime are non-existent in the affidavit. “It’s not only thin, it’s irresponsible,” said Dershowitz.

Dershowitz went on to strongly criticize Corey’s decision to move forward with the case against Zimmerman. “I think what you have here is an elected public official who made a campaign speech last night for reelection when she gave her presentation and overcharged. This case will not – if the evidence is no stronger than what appears in the probable cause affidavit – this case will result in an acquittal.”

I guess I have more than one question about this entire episode. If George Zimmerman followed Trayvon Martin after he was told not to, that was a mistake. I understand that. However, I have a few questions, “If George Zimmerman had not shot Trayvon Martin, would George Zimmerman still be alive? Would he have been beaten to death? Did he have reason to fear that that was a possibility? Does that not then make Florida’s law that says he had a right to defend himself apply?”

This is the modern equivalent of a gun battle at high noon. Regardless of who was right, someone was going to be killed that night.

 


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