I’ve been watching a lot of the Jeff Tobin and Alan Dershowitz debates on CNN. (Jeff is a former student.) Cause, I’ve been baffled how this formerly liberal icon and certainly one of the most famous law professor in my life, has suddenly turned into a Trumpist. Alan has gotten more grief for defending Trump than he did defending OJ.
This long but excellent Politico article explain what happened.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/05/11/alan-dershowitz-donald-trump-what-happened-218359
There is too much to summarize accurately. Briefly Alan hasn’t changed, us Trump haters have. Alan has two main arguments. The first is that constitution grants Presidents vast power and they are broader (pardons, firing people) than are commonly viewed. I’ll let the constitutional scholars argue that, but Alan is in a distinct minority.
The second is that in our hatred for Trump and his team we are ignoring civil liberties. (This happens to virtually everybody in the criminal justice system in Alan’s view.).
Let’s take the specific case of Manafort being jailed because of alleged witness tampering.
5th Amendment
No person… nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
The government convinced a grand jury, that Manafort was contacting witnesses and attempting to influence their testimony. The judge took the grand jury indictment at face value, and revoked Manafort bail and now he is going to spend the next 3 months in jail.
As Alan remind us a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich. The prosecution presented their evidence the defense had no opportunity to present their side of the case. Everyone in this thread is assuming Manafort is guilty of what the government says he did. But by no stretch has their been anything like due process. The judge didn’t a hold a hearing on the charges, the whole scene in court was 15 minutes.
(Now mind you I want this Putin cocksucker, who believes like most of the Trump team, that laws don’t apply to him to spend the rest of his life in jail, and I’d personally take 10-1 odds that he is guilty).
According to Alan, the reason we have 98% conviction rate is that it is stunts like this throwing people in jail pre-trial. Then threaten to lock them up for 40 years, in order to convince them to take a deal a plead-guilty to 2 years. Even if sometimes they are innocent. Does this happen to poor people and minorities every day in America? You betcha. Does it make it right when it happens to a sleazy Trump team member? No it doesn’t.
That’s the crux of Alan’s defense.