Exclusive — Alan Dershowitz: January 6 Committee ‘Reminds Me’ of ‘McCarthyism’

Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz described the Democrat-run House committee ostensibly investigating the events of January 6 as reminiscent of the House Un-American Activities Committee and “McCarthyism” on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Sunday with host Joel Pollak.

“[The January 6 committee] reminds me a little bit of McCarthyism, where you had committees like the House Un-American Activities Committee, which didn’t have an appropriate legislative purpose,” Dershowitz said. “They were just trying to subpoena people for political and ideological purposes.”

The House commission is named the Select Committee to Investigate the Attack on the United States Capitol.

Pollak invited Dershowitz’s remarks on the Supreme Court’s rejection of former President Donald Trump’s attempt to use executive privilege to protect records pursued by congressional committee.

SCOTUS reported, “Supreme Court turned down a request by former President Donald Trump to block the release of presidential records that the committee is seeking. The ruling clears the way for the National Archives to turn over several hundred pages of documents to the committee immediately. Only Justice Clarence Thomas indicated that he disagreed with the court’s decision.”

Dershowitz stated, “The Supreme Court … hasn’t decided the core issue, and that is whether or not an incumbent president can deny the right of a prior president to assert executive privilege over conversations he had while he was in the office. I think the answer to that should be clear and unanimous by the Supreme Court. Of course a former president has the right to assert privilege, otherwise privilege is meaningless, otherwise it just lasts as long as you’re in office, and no president would ever feel comfortable having a confidential conversation with aides or assistants.”

“The harder question is particularization,” he continued. “What kinds of issues come within executive privilege? And that’s what the Supreme Court didn’t want to essentially decide. It’s going to be decided on a document-by-document and person-by-person basis, but I do think, ultimately, there are going to be some real questions raised about the legitimacy of the Supreme Court.”

“I’m involved in one such case,” Dershowitz disclosed. “So I admit my bias. I’m representing the people from the My Pillow company who are subject to a subpoena, and we are challenging that subpoena. … So I’m not a neutral or objective constitutional analyst when it comes to that. I want to put my own bias on the table.”

Pollak then asked about New York’s imposition of race-based rationing of monoclonal antibody treatment for coronavirus patients.

“It’s indefensible,” Dershowitz replied. “Why should an African American billionaire who runs a hedge fund and who went to Groton and Exeter and Harvard Law School and is making hundreds of millions of dollars a year, why should he be put on the line ahead of some poor working class white person just because of race? That’s indefensible and inexcusable. You can’t do that.”

“If the 14th Amendment means anything, it means that,” he continued. “We’ve had experience when we try to use race. We did it, obviously, when a liberal president – Franklin Delano Roosevelt – confined 110,000 Japanese Americans in detention centers based exclusively on their race. We’re having it now, somewhat, in race-based affirmative action programs, which are coming under increasing scrutiny, but you can’t do it with medical issues.”

He concluded, “You can say that people who have a history of illness, people who are susceptible to illness, people who have less access to medical care [should be prioritized for rationed healthcare]. You can make all of those distinctions, but you cannot use race as a surrogate for other issues when you can use the other issues just as easily.”