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| Alan Dershowitz |
Back in 2016, Dershowitz described the Dream Team as "the nightmare team" due to the frequent clashes of egos. Today, the Yale educated law professor sites Article II of the Constitution as justification for President Trump to shit can Mueller and anyone else that gets in his way. He points out that past presidents, namely Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy and Obama all invoked this authority by informing the Justice Department when to investigate individuals as well as when not to prosecute others. Dershowitz wrote that no president has "committed the crime of obstruction of justice by trying to influence prosecutorial decisions."
The fact that this authority is granted by an article in the Constitution is rather significant. Articles are the things that made the first edition of the Constitution. You know, important things like term limits and who takes over should the president get capped. The Amendments are the things the founding fathers forgot to pen in the first time around so were added in later like abolishing slavery and letting women vote.
The first President Bush employed the right to squash investigations when he pardoned Casper Weinberger and several others involved in the Iran Contra scandal. Lawrence Walsh, the special prosecutor, stated at the time that the president's actions were intended to derail an investigation that could have implicated Bush in criminal activities. Dershowitz wrote,
"Yet no one suggested that President Bush be charged with obstruction of justice, because in pardoning those witnesses he was exercising his constitutional authority under Article II."
We have a different set of rules for President Trump, mainly because he refuses to relinquish control of his Twitter feed like most other public figures. For quite some time Martha Stewart tweeted for herself which gave us,
Wow! That dude is awesome! I'm gonna do just that Mike. I guess prison life messed with Martha more than Mike which is why her tweets were often gibberish. It's not like anyone ever tried to stick Mike Tyson with a shiv in prison. Martha probably had to do a lot of gross things to survive, so we have to cut her a little slack on her shaky tweets. The Russian email hack revealed that 21 people needed to approve Hillary Clinton's tweets which were written by an aide. In contrast, Trump tweets are his own words.
The public has an easier time digesting sanitized social media communiques in lieu of the actual truth. Most people want to be placated. It's sort of like staging a house. When my wife and I sold our first home, we removed all pictures of our family, toys and personal items, then my wife baked some bread. Prospective buyers don't want to see other peoples stuff because they can't see themselves living in another family's house. That's what we want from the White House, that is, we prefer the presidency to be staged. We want the message to be packaged for consumption, and it would help if it smelled nice too.
As a lawyer, Dershowitz backs Trump's constitutional rights even when he differs with his policies. Trump's rights are trampled often. For example, a federal judge recently decided that Trump is not allowed to block anyone on his Twitter feed since doing so amounts to censorship. The president could challenge this ruling on the grounds that the 14th Amendment guarantees "equal protection under the law," but he just unblocked them. The only reason Trump allows the Mueller Investigation to continue is because he knows they're not going to find anything.
After going on a fishing expedition in Michael Cohen's offices and stomping all over attorney client privileges, federal investigators came up with some tapes, some of which were leaked to the news media. The Mueller investigation has departed from the Russian collusion mandate and now is trying to prove Trumped cheated on his wife. If Mueller tightens the thumbscrews on Michael Cohen's balls just one more turn, Cohen will start confessing to 9/11. Michael Avenatti filed a baseless case on behalf of Stormy Daniels, described in the media as "an award winning adult film star." Avenatti is trying to nullify contract law which no respectable judge will rule against. Daniels wants to give the money back so she can sell her story for presumably more scratch. She announced she was heading to the border "to help the immigrant children." Forget the wall. The best thing we could do to prevent illegal immigration is line the border with porn stars.
Some journalists have suggested Trump should be impeached for treason for talking to Putin. As the head of the country, he's supposed to talk to other world leaders. Others have pointed out that North Korean Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un, who is guilty of numerous atrocities, was legitimized by his summit with Trump. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill allied with Joseph Stalin against the Nazis during WW II. Stalin is widely regarded as responsible "for the systematic killing of people on a massive scale." Dershowitz made the legal point that treason can be levied only after a declaration of war, not for talking to world leaders with questionable regimes.
The rule of law does not discriminate even when a person isn't well liked by the liberal media and those who were crying in the Javits Center after the last election because they really, really wanted a girl president to win. When laws are biased based on likeability then society is moving in the wrong direction. That just might be the next evolution of a justice system that fines people for using the wrong pronoun.
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