On Monday’s edition of the Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz argued that the Paul Manafort indictment is designed to get leverage over an intimate in the Trump campaign and if Manafort doesn’t have any information on the president or collusion, he’ll be on his own and that shows the danger of special prosecutors who have to go after someone.
Dershowitz, who spoke before it was clear what Manafort is being charged with stated the indictment is “all about leverage. They’re going after Manafort on something that apparently has nothing to do with Trump.”
He noted, “Manafort knows where the bodies are buried. He was an intimate, and if anything happened wrong in the campaign, and there’s no evidence anything did, Manafort would know about it. Even if he wasn’t directly there, he’d have heard about it. And so this is an important event for Mueller to try to get leverage over this intimate.”
Dershowitz further stated that if Manafort doesn’t have anything on the president or collusion, “[H]e’s going to twist in the wind. Because nobody’s — if he has nothing to offer, then he’s just going to have to defend himself on these financial charges that have nothing to do with Trump. This shows the danger of a special prosecutor too.”
He also stated collusion isn’t a crime, and “sometimes prosecutors can twist you, not only into singing, but into composing, into making something up against somebody.”
He later added that presidents “probably” can’t be indicted while in office. He continued, “But that’s the danger of a special prosecutor. He has to go after somebody. He can’t just spend all the money and do nothing. And so, even if he can’t find anything related to what he was ultimately appointed for, if he can find little things, that’s going to be a victory for him.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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