Lead House impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) used part of his opening argument at President Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial Wednesday to trash Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz — for the second day in a row.
Schiff claimed that White House lawyers could not support the claim that “abuse of power” was not an impeachable offense under the Constitution’s standard for “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
He said:
Apparently they could not go to their own Attorney General, who was just reported, in a memo he wrote, as part of the audition for Attorney General, which opined that a president can be impeached for abusing the public trust. Couldn’t go to Bill Barr for that opinion. Couldn’t go to even Jonathan Turley, their expert in the House for that opinion. No, they had go outside of these experts, outside of the constitutional law, to a criminal defense lawyer and professor. And why? Because they can’t contest the facts.
Schiff made similar disparaging comments about Dershowitz on Tuesday, during arguments over procedural motions (original emphasis):
Now they also made the argument that you’ll also hear more later on from, apparently, Professor Dershowitz that, “Well, abuse of power is not an impeachable offense.”
It’s interesting that they had to go outside the realm of constitutional lawyers and scholars to a criminal defense lawyer to make that argument because no reputable constitutional law expert would do that.
Dershowitz is internationally recognized as an expert and scholar in constitutional law, as well as being one of the most accomplished criminal defense lawyers of all time, mostly on the appellate level.
Moreover, as Breitbart News noted, while Jonathan Turley does believe “abuse of power” is impeachable, he disagreed strenuously with the low standard Democrats were using in their attempt to prove abuse of power.
Under Democrats’ standard, he testified, every U.S. president since George Washington would have been impeached for abuse of power.
Dershowitz is expected to testify about the constitutional issues at stake when the White House begins its rebuttal to House Democrats’ case, either late this week or early next week.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.