From the Liveblog of
Sunday, January 19, 2020
Dershowitz, House Democrats clash over Trump impeachment
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleWASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s defenders and supporters skirmish over the airwaves, a day after the US president’s legal team dismissed his impeachment trial as unconstitutional and dangerous.
Coming two days before Trump’s trial opens in the Senate, the clashing arguments offer an early taste of the historic drama to play out in coming weeks.
Beginning Tuesday, the chamber will meet six hours a day for six days a week in only the third impeachment trial of a US president, with lofty constitutional issues brushing up against raw partisan politics.
Celebrity attorney Alan Dershowitz, a recent addition to Trump’s legal team, argues today that even if every charge sent by the House to the Senate for the president’s trial were accepted as true, it would not rise to the level of impeachable behavior.
“The [House] vote was to impeach on abuse of power, which is not within the constitutional criteria for impeachment, and obstruction of justice,” Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor emeritus, says on ABC.
A politically motivated impeachment, he adds, was the “greatest nightmare” of the country’s founders.
Adam Schiff, the California lawmaker chosen by House Democrats as lead manager of the impeachment trial, dismisses the notion that abuse of power was not impeachable.
Another House impeachment manager, Jerrold Nadler, calls Dershowitz’s argument “arrant nonsense.”
— AFP
The Times of Israel Community.