Harvard Law School professor and author Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax Tuesday that a third criminal indictment for former President Donald Trump is “a certainty.” Still, none of the cases appear to have enough evidence for honest convictions, he added.
“It’s a certainty he will be indicted [for Jan. 6, 2021, by special counsel Jack Smith],” Dershowitz said during "National Report" Tuesday. “The question is, Will he be indicted for a constitutionally protected speech on Jan. 6.”
Trump’s speech and the subsequent protest and riot at the U.S. Capitol are being investigated by Smith, who has already indicted Trump on federal criminal charges in Florida for mishandling classified documents after leaving office in 2021.
Dershowitz said he believed it was wrong for Trump to give that speech, but it was not criminal or an “impeachable offense,” despite a House vote impeaching him for it and an acquittal in the Senate.
He also said he wants to see if the alleged “fake electors” Trump is suspected of creating while disputing the 2020 election results are included in the indictment because they are allowed in the Constitution.
“The Constitution really provides for a way of challenging elections by having an alternate slate of electors,” he said. “It happened to [former President] Rutherford B. Hayes; it happened in 1960 to [former President John F.] Kennedy; it's happened since that time; and so I'm interested in seeing what the indictment exactly alleges.”
Dershowitz, who authored the book “Get Trump,” detailing the four current criminal cases being investigated and prosecuted, said the real “tragedy” for the country is how both political parties have weaponized the justice system.
“The terrible tragedy in America we're seeing is the weaponization of the criminal justice system, of impeachment, on both sides and the American public isn't helped by that,” he said. “On the impeachment issue, for example, I argued, successfully in front of the Senate [for Trump], and to impeach the president you have to charge him with treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors, meaning criminal type conduct comparable to treason and bribery.”
Dershowitz said that he does not think Republicans have enough evidence at this point to go after Democratic President Joe Biden the same way Democrats went after Trump without looking like hypocrites.
“If some Republicans now vote for impeachment that voted against Trump's impeachment, there will be an allegation of hypocrisy,” he said. “I think there's a lot of hypocrisy on both sides.”
He said he would rather both sides leave things alone and let the voters decide on election day.
“Americans should be able to vote in the next election based on the economy and foreign policy, not on who's the worst criminal, and that's the way we're seeing it moving toward,” he said. “We voters should have the right to vote for who we think is the best candidate.”
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