President Donald Trump "has a real gut for justice" and should "give more pardons" to Americans who have been unjustly sentenced, Alan Dershowitz said Thursday.
Dershowitz made the comments during an interview on Fox News' "Fox and Friends" morning program in reaction to the president's commutation Wednesday of Alice Johnson, who served two decades for drug offenses.
"I wish he'd give more pardons. I think presidents ought to give more pardons to people who've gotten excessive sentences," Dershowitz told the Fox panel.
Dershowitz agrees with every pardon Trump has dispensed so far, except for former sheriff Joe Arpaio. But overall, the world-renowned attorney and law professor says he hopes Trump can circumvent the bureaucracy to give more pardons.
"I like the idea of a president serving as ultimately the last authority on justice. This president has a real gut for justice," Dershowitz said. "When you can persuade him that there has been an injustice, he'll say, 'We are going to do something about it.'"
Trump "should set up within the White House a group of people who can look at these hundreds of applications, and if they say to him, 'we want you to look at this one,' he should look at it.
"He should bypass the mechanisms of bureaucracy and he should say, 'my gut tells me this sentence is too long,'" Dershowitz said. "I like this president's gut approach to pardoning. If there's an injustice, let's pardon."
Dershowitz also downplayed the furor over Johnson's pardon, given that the genesis of it came from reality TV star Kim Kardashian.
"If the person gives you good advice about a woman who shouldn't be in jail because she's a grandmother, a great-grandmother, she's done terrific things. I don't care who the advice comes from," Dershowitz said.
"I just wanna make sure the president is open to hearing advice from anybody. Anybody who writes a compelling letter should get a hearing in front of white house people and get a pardon or a commutation," Dershowitz said.
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