Alan Dershowitz, on Newsmax TV on Monday, dismissed the argument presented by 144 Constitutional lawyers in a letter last week supporting former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment.
The group of attorneys wrote that arguments claiming Trump’s speech on Jan. 6 is protected by the First Amendment are “legally frivolous,” and said that the First Amendment does not prevent the former president from facing an impeachment trial.
Dershowitz told “John Bachman Now,” when asked about the letter: “I think of myself as a reasonable scholar and jurist, and I am categorically making the argument,” that Trump’s speech was protected by the First Amendment.
“I think the First Amendment … says members of Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, and no law has been interpreted to mean no action of any kind. So, I think since the speech itself was clearly covered by Brandenburg that it's unconstitutional to impeach a president based on that speech, and all 144 of those scholars are wrong, and I'm right.”
He added, “I've been in that position before. I've been right and hundreds and hundreds of scholars have been wrong because they don't think of it as scholarship. They think of it as results oriented decisions that they then look for justifications for in the Constitution, whereas I just look to the Constitution and look to see what the precedent would be if this speech were regarded is not Constitutionally protected, it would ban half the speeches that are made in the Capitol, people, radicals of every stripe, left, right.”
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Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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