[Hot Air] "You should have been reading The Godfather," Alan Dershowitz told Chris Cuomo on CNN’s New Day, rather than law books on the nature of obstruction of justice. Cuomo later picks up the theme by asking whether Donald Trump attempted to give James Comey "the baccio di tutti bacci" to Jeffrey Toobin, who says that we won’t know until we actually see the memo and get testimony about the nature of the conversation. But as Newsmax notes, Dershowitz believes that the controversy is more likely to provide full employment for pundits and constitutional experts than produce an indictment:
"Under the unitary executive theory, the president has the right to tell the FBI what to do," Dershowitz told CNN’s "New Day" anchor Chris Cuomo, invoking a theory that holds the president possesses the power to control the entire executive branch of the government.
"Thomas Jefferson managed the trial against Aaron Burr. President [Lyndon B.] Johnson interacted with the Justice Department and FBI."
However, he continued, the fact that Trump is president cuts both ways, Dershowitz continued.
"He has the power to tell them what to do," said Dershowitz, but since the president also was the only person who could have fired Comey, it’s not clear if he obstructed justice if he suggested to Comey to "go soft" on former National Security Agency Director Michael Flynn, as Comey has suggested and written in a memo.
"This is a complex and difficult issue, which we will never reach," said Dershowitz.
One point Dershowitz fails to mention is that the president is immune from prosecution while in office. In the clip, he suggests that even if House Republicans are inclined to look toward impeachment, they’d want an independent prosecutor to produce a bill of charges on which they could rely. However, Ryan Goodman pointed out today at Politico that a special prosecutor might be inapplicable due to two findings on presidential immunity. And an attempt to get around it could be stopped by Trump: |
