Dershowitz Joins Impeachment Defense Team

President Trump has chosen Prof. Alan Dershowitz to argue against impeachment in the Senate (front page and news article, page A17, Jan.18 ). Mr. Dershowitz accepted the assignment but wants it known that he remains a liberal who will be defending the Constitution, not Mr. Trump. He has reminded us that his concern for civil liberties has led, in the past,  to his representation of other unpopular clients including neo-Nazis, a rather apt comparison. It was his professed concern for civil liberties which also drew him to regularly join Sean Hannity in badmouthing Robert Mueller and his investigation, which documented Mr. Trump's multiple acts of obstruction of justice.

Now, purportedly prompted by his fear that Democrats are attempting to weaponize the impeachment power, to rid the  nation of a would be tyrant, Mr. Dershowitz  is expected to argue that the charge of abuse of power is too open-ended and constitutionally impermissible.  Although Mr. Dershowitz has conceded that an article of impeachment need not specify a particular crime, his planned contention ignores that Mr. Trump's proven conduct falls squarely within the crimes of extortion and coercion and those crimes are implicit in and delimit the parameters of the charge of abuse of power. Prof. Dershowitz's misguided, and legally mistaken defense of Donald Trump's "constitutional rights" makes him an enabler, wittingly or otherwise, of Mr. Trump's ongoing destruction of the liberties Mr. Dershowitz purports to defend.