Alan Dershowitz believes Trump’s indictment is clearly a case of ‘targeting’ by the DOJ, saying they picked the man and then looked for a crime.
Here’s more via Fox News:
Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz offered his legal insight into the indictment of former President Trump, saying special counsel Jack Smith had only one job when he was assigned to the case- “Get Trump.”
Dershowitz argued Smith was “wrong” when he said there is only one set of laws for the country.
“He was assigned only one job –to get Trump,” he said on “Sunday Morning Futures.” “If you put aside all your resources and do what Justice Jackson warned about 80 years ago, where he said it’s a question of picking the man and then searching the law books or putting investigators to work to pin some offense on him. That’s what they did.”
Dershowitz does believe, however, that the audio recording of Trump admitting he did not declassify a classified document is damning evidence:
Dershowitz said while he believes the case against the former president is “the product of targeting,” the 44-page indictment lays out one “damning piece of evidence.”
The indictment highlighted a recorded conversation Trump had in a 2021 meeting where he acknowledged he had a document that he did not declassify.
TRUMP: This was done by the military and given to me. Uh, I think we can probably, right?
STAFFER: I don’t know, we’ll, we’ll have to see. Yeah, we’ll have to try to—
TRUMP: Declassify it.
STAFFER: —figure out a—yeah.
TRUMP: See as president I could have declassified it.
STAFFER: Yeah. [Laughter]
TRUMP: Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.
STAFFER: Yeah. [Laughter] Now we have a problem.
TRUMP: Isn’t that interesting?”
“There’s one problem with that, and that is the tape recording in which Donald Trump foolishly waves a piece of paper and says, I could have declassified this, but I didn’t. It’s secret. Here, look at it. Now, maybe he didn’t actually allow the person to read it. But that tape recording, which can’t be cross-examined, you can’t say it’s a flip witness or a witness who shouldn’t have been able to testify. That’s a damning piece of evidence,” Dershowitz told host Maria Bartiromo.
“Now, the defense could be, ‘Hey, I had the right to have that piece of information because the Records Act permits me to have it.’ But that’s going to be a kind of weak defense. I think this is a much stronger indictment than the Bragg indictment, but it’s the product of targeting.”
He added Trump is “lucky” the case will be tried in Palm Beach County because he may get a “sympathetic” jury, and he has a “good judge” assigned to the case.
If he believes Trump is ‘lucky’ to have a jury in Florida, then he must not feel the case bodes all that well for Trump.
Regardless of how partisan and unfair this case is, the bottom line is that it will have to be taken seriously by the court. Maybe Trump can get the case dismissed on the grounds of selective prosecution, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.