Monday, during an appearance on FNC’s “Hannity,” Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz explained why he viewed the House Select Committee on January 6 as “unconstitutional.”
Dershowitz told fill-in host Pete Hegseth that it violated the Constitution in three areas, including going beyond performing legislative functions.
“Of course, it’s never been done before because it’s unconstitutional,” he said. “It violates three provisions of the Constitution. Article One says that the power of Congress is limited to performing a legislative function. This is not a legislative function. Making a referral to Congress has nothing to do with legislation. Second is the bill of attainder prohibition as well, which says that Congress doesn’t have the power to specify and name people for prosecution.”
“The spirit of that provision was also violated, and finally this is the 14th Amendment which does say that Congress does have some power when it comes to the kind of insurrection that led to the Civil War,” Dershowitz continued. “But that’s a very limited power, and so this is a very dangerous thing. It’s not just irrelevant. The Justice Department will toss this into the waste basket after writing a polite letter to the committee. They shouldn’t do that. They should reject it, and they should denounce the committee for violating the separation of power and our system of checks and balances.”
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