Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz told Breitbart News Tonight on Monday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions should withdraw his recusal from the Department of Justice’s investigation into Trump associates — at least as far as it considers President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen.
Dershowitz offered his remarks during a Monday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak.
Dershowitz said, “Sometimes you should un-recuse yourself, and I think Attorney General Sessions should un-recuse himself when it comes to the New York investigation because it’s not part of the Russia investigation. He’s not a witness or a potential subject there. He’s the attorney general of the United States. He ought to be in charge of supervising the New York investigation, not Rosenstein.”
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Pollak asked Dershowitz if such an un-recusal from Sessions would lead to a pursuit of obstruction of justice charges against President Donald Trump.
Dershowitz replied, “[Jeff Sessions] wouldn’t try to stop [the New York investigation]. He’d play the same role, presumably, that [Deputy Attorney General Rod] Rosenstein is playing. He’d be one to sign off on the search warrant. He’d be the one to be supervising the U.S. attorney as the Attorney General of the United States always does. It’s just that he would replace Rosenstein. Rosenstein isn’t stopping the investigation. Presumably neither would [Sessions], but he’d be the one in charge. There’s no reason why he should be recused from the New York investigation, unless the New York investigation is really just an extension of Mueller’s investigation, in which case that raises other problems.”
Pollak then described Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s supervision of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s operation as unusual given his dual role as both a supervisor and potential witness.
Pollak stated, “There’s a lot of questions arising about Rod Rosenstein, who signed off on the decision to go after Michael Cohen. The curious thing about him is he’s technically in charge of Mueller and the whole special counsel investigation, but he’s also a witness in that investigation because he’s the person who wrote the memo directing that James Comey be fired. I don’t understand how you can have someone who’s a witness, potentially, in an investigation also supervising the investigation. From the start this seems weird.”
Dershowitz concurred with Pollak’s assessment.
He said, “I’ve been making this point for three months. He should have recused himself. He’s more recusable, even than Sessions, and he clearly will be called as a witness if there’s any obstruction of justice charges against the president because the first witness you’re going to want is the guy who signed the letter justifying it.
“So I don’t understand how he stays on. Even if technically he doesn’t have to recuse himself, when you’re going after the president, again, you have to be ‘Caesar’s wife’ and you have to lean over backwards and make sure that you don’t give your enemies any ammunition. The idea that a witness is going to be this person supervising the prosecution just defies common sense.”
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