Maybe he’d prefer Barack Obama? No, definitely he’d prefer Barack Obama, whose mastery of the Constitution was such that during one of his patented tearful disquisitions on gun violence, he misused the term peaceful assembly, which appears in the First Amendment.
Regardless, Adam Schiff, who is himself an attorney (you can tell by the many cheap lawyer tricks he has used in his two-hour disquisitions on the Senate floor in the past two days), fancies he knows he a good constitutional law expert when he sees one. And he doesn’t see one in Alan Dershowitz, who has joined Donald Trump’s legal team as a pro bono adviser.
Said Schiff of Dershowitz, according to Breitbart:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Now they also made the argument that you’ll also hear more later on from, apparently, Professor [Alan] Dershowitz that, “Well, abuse of power is not an impeachable offense.”
It’s interesting that they had to go outside the realm of constitutional lawyers and scholars to a criminal defense lawyer to make that argument because no reputable constitutional law expert would do that.
Indeed, the one they called in the House, Republicans called in the House, Jonathan Turley, has said exactly the opposite. There’s a reason Jonathan Turley is not sitting at the table, much to his dismay, and that is because he doesn’t support their argument! So they’ll cite him for one thing but ignore him for the other.
It’s worth reminding readers that Turley was the sole Republican witness in the House impeachment charade, selected by the GOP even though he is a registered Democrat who voted for Barack Obama. Then again, so is Dershowitz, on both counts.
Dershowitz was asked to respond to Schiff’s critique of him, which he did in an interview with Spectator USA:
I’ve taught constitutional criminal procedure for nearly half a century. I’ve taught a seminar on impeachment, I’ve written three books on impeachment, I’ve written several other books on constitutional law and numerous articles. I’ve taught a course on constitutional litigation and I’ve litigated dozens of constitutional cases. They would not be making this argument about me if I were on their side. It’s totally ad hominem and selective.
Your witness, Schiff?
