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Tag: alan dershowitz
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:

The Sad Implosion Of Alan Dershowitz

The Sad Implosion Of Alan Dershowitz

The road leading to President Donald Trump’s acquittal from charges of which he is plainly guilty is littered with a trail of public figures selling their souls and abandoning their consciences. Few have been more dispiriting, however, than retired law professor Alan Dershowitz, whose reputation imploded in national view during Trump’s impeachment trial, all seemingly because of an unquenchable thirst for limelight. Dershowitz’s embarrassing performance in the service of a corrupt president who positively basks in a totalitarian’s view of his own power (speaking of the Constitution, he said, “I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president”) left Dershowitz looking like a sad and simple toady, so enthralled by media attention that he is willing to say anything for anyone in order to get it.

From its outset, the Trump presidency provided Dershowitz the welcome opportunity for attention, and he has taken advantage of it. He has been ubiquitous on cable television, sounding somewhere between silly and ridiculous on the president’s behalf, arguing that the poor beleaguered Trump was being persecuted by those bent on trampling his civil liberties. As impeachment proceedings got underway, Dershowitz found himself in increasing demand and was tapped to be on Trump’s defense team, an appointment he appeared to relish. His pitch: However accurately the articles of impeachment passed by the House summarize Trump’s conduct, Trump cannot be impeached because he has not committed a statutory crime. Before you could say, “egg on his face,” a clip surfaced of Dershowitz proclaiming the precise opposite with equal self-assurance in 1999. “It certainly doesn’t have to be a crime,” Dershowitz had said. “If you have somebody who completely corrupts the office of the president and who abuses trust and who poses great danger to our liberty, you don’t need a technical crime.”

Faced with this direct contradiction from his own lips, Dershowitz launched a series of cringeworthy “clarifications” that damaged his credibility further. “I wasn’t wrong. I have a more sophisticated basis for my argument,” he explained to one interviewer. “I didn’t do research back then. I relied on what professors said,” he told another. “I am much more correct right now,” he insisted to a third, a line that may live on for its hubris and its inanity.

From there, Dershowitz proceeded to the well of the Senate to declare on behalf of President Trump that Trump could demand whatever he wanted of whomever he wanted as long as he believed it would get him reelected. “If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment,” announced Dershowitz. This concept of American democracy evoked Mussolini more than Jefferson. Once again, Dershowitz tried to backtrack, falsely denying what he had said and then accusing those who had heard him of “distortion.”

In his needy zeal for the spotlight, Dershowitz has self-eviscerated, eliminating his credibility on an issue that, one imagines, matters more to him than Trump does. For decades, Dershowitz has ably made the progressive case for Israel, challenging its critics on the left and arguing, frequently under fire, that those who genuinely care about democratic values should regard Israel, which has broadly preserved those values, with respect, rather than hatred. Dershowitz’s unprincipled defense of the attempted dismantling of democracy by a president contemptuous of it has served to decommission him as an advocate for Israel; his association with Israel hurts Israel, rather than helps it, which is too bad for it and too bad for him.

In fairness, Donald Trump has had quite a team of enablers, and Dershowitz is far from the only one who has contributed to our crisis by letting his country down. He is a reminder of how much, and how quickly, work needs to be done to restore our nation to the one we once took for granted.

Jeff Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment, he is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Mideast.