Alan Dershowitz - The Case Against the Democratic House Impeaching Trump

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Copyright 2019 by Alan Dershowitz

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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

Cover design by Brian Peterson

ISBN: 978-1-5107-4770-8

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-4771-5

Printed in the United States of America

Dedication

This book is respectfully dedicated to an endangered species: genuine civil libertarians who pass the shoe on the other foot test.

Acknowledgments

M y appreciation to my wife, Carolyn Cohen, who reads, reviews, and corrects everything I write, and to Elon Dershowitz, Jamin Dershowitz, Ella Dershowitz, and others who critiqued my words. Also, thanks to Harvey Silverglate and Alan Rothfeld for reviewing and critiquing the manuscript.

This book could not have been written without the valuable assistance of my research team, Aaron Voloj Dessauer, Jennifer Barrow, and Hannah Dodson, who researched and contributed to the text and footnotes, and my assistant, Maura Kelley, who deciphered and typed my handwritten drafts and provided her usual invaluable assistance. You all know how much I appreciate your extraordinary efforts. A special thanks to my agent, Karen Gantz, who guided me through the process.

Also, my thanks to Michael Campbell, Tony Lyons, and Bill Wolfsthal of Skyhorse Publishing for their speed and professionalism in getting the book ready for print.

Authors Note

P art I of the following text was originally printed in The Case Against Impeaching Trump (Hot Books, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, 2018). In the months since the original publication, I have only seen the issues discussed therein worsen. In hopes of contributing to a more tolerant, less extreme, more nonviolent, and more critical America, Ive added to, updated, and revised my arguments and published them here. For the sake of democracy, I hope they are widely read.

Contents

PART I:
THE CONSTITUTIONAL CASE FOR IMPEACHING TRUMP DOESNT PASS THE LEGAL TEST

PART II:
THE POLITICAL CASE FOR IMPEACHING TRUMP DOESNT PASS THE SHOE ON THE OTHER FOOT TEST

Part I:
The Constitutional Case Against Impeaching Trump Doesnt Pass the Legal Test

A s a liberal democrat who worked hard to try to win back the House of Representatives, I urge my fellow Democrats not to shoot themselves in the foot by trying to impeach President Trump. As soon as it was announced that the Democrats had won control of the House, radical leftists were urging them to impeach President Trump. In an op-ed in the New York Times entitled Why Democrats Must Impeach the President, billionaire Democratic activist Tom Steyer demanded that the new Democratic House majority must initiate impeachment proceedings against him as soon as it takes office in January. Some newly elected Democratic members of Congress who ran on the promise to impeach President Trump are also demanding that articles of impeachment be prepared, as are some in the media.

There are several reasons why this would be a mistake. The first is constitutional: it would be unconstitutional to impeach Trump unless there was substantial evidence that, while in office, he committed treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. Second, it would be a costly political blunder for the Democratic members of Congress who now control the House to fritter away their hard-earned mandate by engaging in a futile effort to remove President Trump. The effort would almost certainly fail unless dramatic new evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors were to emerge, because it would be impossible to secure the two-thirds supermajority in the Senate that is required to remove a sitting president. Finally, it would be hypocritical in the extreme for Democrats to do to President Trump what the Republicans did to President Bill Clinton: namely, impeach him for conduct that did not constitute a constitutionally impeachable offense. Democrats, including me, railed against Republicans for impeaching Bill Clinton, as we did when Republicans threatened to impeach and/or lock up Hillary if she became president. Impeaching President Trump would not pass what I call the shoe on the other foot test, which I explain in Part II of this book.