Responding to a question about how presidents conduct foreign policy, Dershowitz asserted Wednesday that “every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest.” Therefore, he continued, “if a president did something that he believes will help him get elected — in the public interest — that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.”
But tweeting Thursday, Dershowitz insisted that he “did not say or imply that a candidate could do anything to reassure his reelection, only that seeking help in an election is not necessarily corrupt.” Concluding his string of posts, he wrote: “Critics have an obligation to respond to what I said, not to create straw men to attack.”
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the lead House manager prosecuting the case against the president, immediately rebuffed Dershowitz’s theory during the question-and-answer session Wednesday, warning that it would grant presidents “carte blanche” to use the office to further their own political interests rather than those of the nation.
Incredulous Democratic lawmakers continued to express outrage over the argument Thursday, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) citing it as a moment from the trial that “stood out amazingly.”
“I hear he’s correcting it on TV today. That seems to be Mr. Dershowitz’s pattern,” Schumer said at a news conference in the Capitol. “He gives a statement on the floor and then spends the next day correcting it. What a load of nonsense.”
According to what Schumer called “Dershowitzian logic,” President Richard Nixon would have been absolved of any wrongdoing during the Watergate scandal. The reasoning from Trump’s attorney, he added, “would unleash a monster. More aptly, it would unleash a monarch.”
Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), another House manager, deemed Wednesday to be a “really astounding day” for the president’s defense during an interview Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“Maybe the most astounding thing came out of Mr. Dershowitz,” Crow said, adding: “I mean, that is just a very dangerous hole to go down.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said she thought that even some of her Republican colleagues “quietly agreed” with her bleak evaluation of Dershowitz’s logic, which she considered “completely contrary to what this country is about.”
“Our country was founded on this idea that we were an independent democracy, that we didn’t want to be ruled by a king,” Klobuchar said. “And if you say things like that — like you can do anything you want and it doesn’t matter — just to further your election, you basically have a dictator. You have a king. You have no democracy.”
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, also blasted Dershowitz in a tweet Thursday, writing: “I still can’t believe the President’s lawyer tried to convince the United States Senate that foreign election interference isn’t a crime.”
Appearing before reporters in the Capitol ahead of the second day of senators’ questions, Schiff again sharply criticized the White House defense team for making “the most incredible arguments born of desperation — arguments that, if the senators ever followed, would lead this country down the most destructive path.”
Source: politico.com
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