Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, who is also serving as legal counsel for President Donald Trump‘s defense team in the Senate impeachment trial, said on Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that abuse of power and obstruction of Congress even if proved are not impeachable offenses.
Dershowitz said, “You can’t charge a president with impeachable conduct if it doesn’t fit within the criteria for the Constitution.”
He continued, “The articles of impeachment are two noncriminal actions, namely obstruction of congress and abuse of power.”
Host George Stephanopoulos asked, “Is it your position that President Trump should not be impeached even if the arguments laid out by the House are accepted as fact?”
Dershowitz said, “That’s right. When you have somebody who, for example, is indicted for crime, let’s assume you have a lot of evidence, but the grand jury simply indicts for something that’s not a crime, and that’s what happened here. You have a lot of evidence, disputed evidence that could go both ways, but the vote was to impeach on abuse of power which is not within the constitutional criteria for impeachment and obstruction of Congress.”
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