Alan Dershowitz - Get Trump: the Threat to Civil Liberties, Due Process, and Our Constitutional Rule of Law

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Copyright 2023 by Alan Dershowitz

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-5107-7781-1

eBook: 978-1-5107-7782-8

Cover design by Brian Peterson

Printed in the United States of America

DEDICATION

This book is warmly dedicated to my student, mentee, mentor, colleague, and friend Harvey Silverglatea great lawyer, an honest civil libertarian, and a paradigmatic mensch. One of the very few people who understandsand is willing to publicly defend my principled support for the Constitution, even on behalf of Donald Trump.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Maura Kelly, Hector Carosso, and Tony Lyons for their help and support in producing this manuscript; to my dear wife Carolyn for inspiring, challenging, and constructively correcting me; and to Alan Rothfeld for keeping me on the grammatically and factually straight and narrow.

Contents

Introduction

N ow that Donald Trump has announced his candidacy for reelection as president, the unremitting efforts by his political opponents to get himto stop him from runningat any cost will only increase. These efforts may pose the most significant threat to civil liberties since McCarthyism. Though the end may seem commendable to manystopping Trump from retaking the presidencysome of the means being advocated and employed challenge the very constitutional foundations of our liberty: due process, right to counsel, free speech, and the rule of law.

It is precisely because so many decent people honestly believe that a second Trump presidency would endanger our nation, that it is difficult to persuade them that their attacks on our cherished constitutional rights will cause enduringperhaps irremediableharm to our liberties. The fact that they may be right, at least to some degree, makes it more difficult to persuade many citizens that the danger to our constitutional rights may be deeper and more enduring. They see the threat posed by Trump as concrete and immediate, whereas the threat to our liberties is more abstract and long term. But history teaches us that ends, even if believed to be noble, do not justify ignoble means that are inconsistent with democracy and the rule of law.

Lifelong civil libertarians and liberals, who have been suspicious of prosecutors, the FBI, and congressional investigatory committees, have suddenly become their most ardent supporters, advocating even more aggressive and repressive tacticsso long as they are directed at getting Trump. Defenders of Trumps constitutional rightseven those like me who oppose him politicallyare sought to be silenced; their free speech rights attacked, their integrity questioned, and their careers threatened.