Dershowitz Outlines Role in Trump Impeachment Trial

“THAT’S NOT WHAT THE FRAMERS HAD IN MIND”

by Sharon Rondeau

(Jan. 17, 2020) — In an interview on Friday night’s “Hannity,” Harvard Law School Prof. Emeritus Alan Dershowitz announced he will be presenting oral argument during the Senate’s trial on the two Articles of Impeachment against President Trump generated by the House of Representatives last month.

The trial is scheduled to begin at 1:00 p.m. Tuesday following the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.

On Wednesday, after a 27-day delay, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced House “impeachment managers” during a press conference, after which the managers and Pelosi held a celebratory signing of the Articles and procession in which they carried the document through the U.S. Capitol to the Senate chamber.

Constitutionally, the House has the “sole power of impeachment,” while the Senate serves as the trial court of impeachments with the U.S. Supreme Court chief justice presiding.

Dershowitz, 81, a Democrat and Fox News contributor until Friday, when he announced on Twitter that he would be joining the White House’s impeachment team, told Hannity his goal is to “persuade some Democrats” that impeachment is not warranted.

“My job next week will be to present the constitutional case against impeachment, a case that I’ve been presenting on your show, in two books, and 25 articles,” Dershowitz said.  He argued that Hunter Biden, who received tens of thousands of dollars monthly from Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings when his father, Joe Biden, served as the Obama regime’s “point person” on Ukraine, is “relevant” to the impeachment, contrary to what many in the mainstream media are contending.

In an appearance on January 23, 2018 at the Council on Foreign Relations, Joe Biden bragged that he was responsible for effecting the firing in early spring 2016 of Viktor Shokin, Ukraine’s then-prosecutor general by threatening to withhold $1.5 billion in U.S. loan guarantees.

Democrats have not accused Biden of a “quid pro quo” while claiming that Trump attempted to “extort” Zelenskiy with the tactic.

Trump’s impeachment came about as a result of a July 25, 2019 phone call he had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in which he mentioned the Bidens.  Democrats claim Trump displayed an abuse of power and betrayal of “national security” in his alleged desire to damage a “political opponent.”

Last April, Joe Biden announced he would run for president and is reported by some polling to be the “frontrunner.”  He has twice run for president before but ultimately not received the Democratic nomination.

Dershowitz did not say whether or not he perceives that the Senate will allow witnesses who did not testify in the House hearings.  “The reason I agreed to do this…is because I’m concerned about future presidents,” he said. “This will weaken the presidency if this is a precedent; it will make impeachment a weaponized tactic to be used anytime a president who is controversial faces a House that has a majority on the other side. That’s not what the Framers had in mind, and I will lay out the debates over the constitutional convention; lay out what happened, why the Framers picked these four words: ‘treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors,’ referring to the language in Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution.

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