Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz says the House Democrats’ effort to impeach President Donald Trump is akin to a Stalin-era maxim to “Show me the man and I'll find you the crime."
In an interview to air Sunday night with Fox News’ Mark Levin, Dershowitz said Trump's controversial July 25 phone call with Ukraine does not meet the legal level of bribery.
"[I]t can't operate when you're the president of the United States and you're conditioning or withholding money in order to make sure that a country isn't corrupt and you're asking them to investigate [something]," he asserted, Fox News reported ahead of the interview airing.
"That just doesn't fit any definition of bribery — common law definition of bribery, statutory definition of bribery — however you define the constitutional word 'bribery.' It just doesn't fit," he said.
Dershowitz recalled the mantra of a former Soviet Union official who would customarily dismiss any presumption of innocence against the accused.
"What they're trying to do is what the KGB under Lavrentiy Beria said to Stalin, the dictator — I'm not comparing our country to the Soviet Union — I just want to make sure it never becomes anything like that," he said.
Beria, he noted, once the Soviet deputy premier and interior minister, famously would reassure Stalin, "Show me the man and I'll find you the crime."
"And that's what some of the Democrats are doing," Dershowitz claimed. "They have Trump in their sights. They want to figure out a way of impeaching him and they're searching for a crime."
Related Stories: