Tag: alan dershowitz
Trump Pressuring House Republicans To 'Expunge' Both Impeachments Of Him

Trump Pressuring House Republicans To 'Expunge' Both Impeachments Of Him

President Donald Trump is planning to hassle Congress to expunge his impeachments.

The president is trying to get Republican lawmakers to remove his impeachments from the record even though legally such a move is impossible, reported The Wall Street Journal’s Annie Linskey, Olivia Beavers and Natalie Andrews on Thursday.

“It should be done because I did nothing wrong,” Trump told the Journal. “It was a rigged deal—it was a whole rigged situation.”

The Journal noted that this could backfire, saying “Any move to attempt to erase the two impeachments, in 2019 and 2021, would open up a debate about Trump’s past behavior in office, forcing GOP lawmakers to relitigate charges of abuse of power, obstruction of Congress and inciting an insurrection. Facing the prospect of losing their majority in the House, Republicans are trying to shift focus to the economy and high costs, the issues that voters care about most.”

Yet even though “the measure likely wouldn’t be considered until after the November election,” the issue could still become a political lightning rod. “Trump has posted news clips about voiding the impeachments on his Truth Social account,” the Journal reported. “But this week, he played down his own role in the effort. ‘If they want to do it, I’m honored by it,’ the president said.”

The Journal added that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R—LA) has discussed the resolution with Trump. He has also discussed it with Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz

“I think it makes a lot of sense the more the evidence comes out, the more we know they really were sham impeachments,” Johnson told the Journal, later adding that “we were saying it at the time, now we know. And they make a very compelling case that it should be expunged from the record, because it was a hyperpartisan attack job.”

Speaking with this journalist for Salon in 2019, Dershowitz — who later defended Trump during one of his impeachment trials — denied that he would ever refuse to step down if he lost an election, which is what prompted the impeachment at which Dershowitz did not represent Trump.

No president will refuse to step down if his opponent is elected in his place,” Dershowitz told Salon. “It just will not happen, and the American public would never tolerate it.”

Discussing the Wall Street Journal story, CNN correspondents agreed that Trump’s attempt to scrub the impeachment is both purely symbolic and likely to resurrect the Ukraine coercion and election-denying scandals that prompted those impeachments in the first place.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet


Freshly Sanctioned By Judge, Lake Lawyers Still Seeking To Overturn Election

Freshly Sanctioned By Judge, Lake Lawyers Still Seeking To Overturn Election

Failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake celebrated a judge’s decision Monday to grant a sliver of her election lawsuit passage to trial — where it will be argued by a crackpot legal team sanctioned just weeks ago for filing “entirely frivolous” election lawsuits.

Lake’s lawyers — MAGA attorneys Alan Dershowitz, Kurt Olsen, and Andrew Parker — were chastised and sanctioned by a federal judge on December 1 for filing a garbage lawsuit in April to compel Arizona to use only paper ballots going forward, which the state already did.

U.S. District Judge John J. Tuchi, who issued the sanctions, acknowledged “concerns expressed by other federal courts about misuse of the judicial system to baselessly cast doubt on the electoral process in a manner that is conspicuously consistent with the plaintiffs’ political ends.”

The sanctions, the judge said, were to “penalize specific attorney conduct with the broader goal of deterring similarly baseless filings initiated by anyone, whether an attorney or not.”

Lake, who no doubt was privy to the ruling word for word, told a different story to a crowd of supporters at far-right Turning Point USA’s America Fest on Saturday, claiming, “The powers that be are trying to silence them.”

"Can you pray for our legal team?" she asked the crowd. "They're telling these attorneys: 'If you dare try to fight these stolen, corrupted elections, we're going to take away your license to practice law, we're going to take away your ability to feed your family.’”

On Tuesday, Lake admitted to fringe-right podcaster and TPUSA leader Charlie Kirk that the court sanctions had spurred what was left of her shambolic legal team to flee in droves, a development she likewise blamed on the “left.”

“We had attorneys who did walk away because the left is threatening them with their ability to make a living and practice law,” she told Kirk. “And some of our attorneys said, ‘Look, I got mouths to feed, I can’t do this case, I don’t want to be sanctioned.’”

“I got to a point where I said, ‘I’ll take anybody,’” Lake added, unwittingly verifying the quality of her legal counsel and admitting to the dead-on-arrival nature of her electoral allegations.

Lake, who lost November’s Arizona gubernatorial race to Gov-elect Katie Hobbs by over 17,000 votes, alleged in her new 70-page complaint that “the number of illegal votes cast in Arizona’s general election… far exceeds the 17,117 vote margin.”

The lawsuit contained a hodgepodge of allegations untethered to reality, including a new right-wing hoax — based on Elon Musk's selectively released “Twitter Files” — that Hobbs, in her capacity as then-secretary of state, had engaged in censorship and election interference by flagging tweets with election misinformation for removal.

In a stinging rebuke of the electoral conspiracies on which Lake’s campaign stands, Maricopa County Superior Court judge Peter Thompson struck out all but two of ten of the dubious claims made by Lake and her lawyers.

The two surviving claims in her lawsuit — unfounded allegations Hobbs attorney Marc Elias said Lake would find impossible to prove in court — comprise the wild allegation that Republican Maricopa county officials sabotaged Election Day printers to disenfranchise Lake voters.


Despite the daunting challenge of corroborating such a claim, Lake cheered the ruling in a tweet Tuesday, asking the American public to “buckle up.”

Prior to the ruling, Lake hinted over the weekend about what awaited her opposers should her election subversion efforts fail: violence.

“They have built a house of cards here in Maricopa County,” she told Kirk during a Turning Point USA conference over the weekend. “I think they’re all wondering what I’m gonna do. I’ll tell you what: I’m not just gonna knock that house of cards over. We’re going to burn it to the ground.”

Judge Slaps Down Dershowitz Demand That FBI Return Pillow Guy's Phone

Judge Slaps Down Dershowitz Demand That FBI Return Pillow Guy's Phone

My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell will not be getting his cell phone back from the FBI any time soon, even after his new lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, demanded it from a federal court in their First, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment lawsuit against Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray.

Lindell’s phone was seized by federal agents at an Indiana Hardee’s drive-thru after a duck hunting trip the shredded foam entrepreneur and right-wing conspiracy theorist recently took. Last week he accused the federal government of engaging in “Gestapo tactics” for taking his phone, despite a warrant that shows he is reportedly under investigation for possible identity theft, conspiring to damage a protected computer connected to a suspected voting equipment security breach, and conspiracy to defraud the United States.

On Tuesday Dershowitz and three other attorneys filed suit against the DOJ in a Minnesota federal court.

On Wednesday Dershowitz and the other attorneys filed a memorandum demanding the judge appoint a special master, and in an interview on Lindell’s streaming video website went so far as to state, “What we’re seeking is what President Trump got in the Mar-a-Lago case, the appointment of a special investigator to look into this – or return of the cell phone.”

On Thursday United States District Court Judge Eric Tostrud of Minnesota, appointed by Donald Trump in 2018, responded, in this order posted by Politico’s Kyle Cheney.

“Denied,” he wrote in his ruling, while criticizing the attorneys’ work, presumably including Dershowitz’s.

“Plaintiffs,” Judge Tostrud wrote, “have not served Defendants [Garland and Wray] with the Complaint, or at least Plaintiffs have not yet filed any proof of service.”

That was just the first slap.

Lindell’s attorneys, including Dershowitz, had said the seizure of Lindell’s phone constituted an “emergency,” and filed a request for a temporary restraining order.

Tostrud spent the next several pages of his Thursday order explaining all the technical and legal reasons why the motion requesting Lindell’s phone be returned were faulty or just wrong.

Among them: “A temporary restraining order is an ‘extraordinary remedy.'”

Other legalese include, “The request does not comply with Rule 65(b),” “With respect to subparagraph (b)(1)(B), however, Plaintiffs’ attorney filed no certification,” and “Plaintiffs do not discuss the Rule or cite any authority that might explain why the cellphone’s return is appropriate under the Rule.”

Other damning language includes, “But that’s it,” “that’s understating things,” and “it would be a stretch to grant relief.”

Then there’s this one: “It is a familiar rule that courts of equity do not ordinarily restrain criminal prosecutions.”

The judge even cited Wednesday evening’s 11th Circuit smack-down of Donald Trump’s attempt to claim 100 classified documents may or may not be classified but should be returned to him in his criticism.

Top national security attorney Brad Moss referred to that as he mocked Dershowitz, saying, “nice lawyering, sir.”


Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Dershowitz on Trump Lawyer: ‘I Have No Idea What He’s Doing’

Dershowitz on Trump Lawyer: ‘I Have No Idea What He’s Doing’

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Alan Dershowitz panned the performance of President Donald Trump's first lawyer in his Senate impeachment trial, Bruce Castor, in an appearance during the proceedings on Tuesday. Dershowitz appeared bewildered at the opening remarks.

"I have no idea what he's doing," said Dershowitz, who defended Trump during his first impeachment. "Maybe he'll bring it home, but right now, it does not appear to me to be effective advocacy."

Castor's rambling and unfocused argument was widely criticized. Noting that Castor had seemed to go out of his way to praise the Senators, Dershowitz said: "Maybe they want to be buttered up, maybe they want to be told what great people they are and how he knows two Senators, but it's not the kind of argument I would have made, I have to tell you that."

Instead, Dershowitz, who was recently exposed for trying to get presidential clemency for convicted child sex trafficker George Nader, said he would have argued that the president's alleged incitement of an insurrection was protected First Amendment speech. Many other experts and scholars have argued, however, that the First Amendment does not cover Trump's conduct.

Watch the clip below:

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