Alan Dershowitz made a bizarre legal assessment on Fox News that left critics scratching and shaking their heads.
The attorney — who has served on defense teams for high-profile clients including O.J. Simpson, Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein — spoke to Fox News’ Sean Hannity about the former president’s hush money case, for which jury selection began this week.
Prosecutors are seeking to have Trump held in contempt for violating a gag order imposed by Judge Juan Merchan. Trump has been raging publicly at the two star witnesses of the case, his former attorney Michael Cohen and porn star Stormy Daniels.
“The gag order is unconstitutional,” Dershowitz said on Fox News. “You cannot prevent the defendant from attacking the witnesses, from attacking the judge’s daughter, if the judge’s daughter could be a basis for disqualification.”
The Harvard Law professor emeritus went on to complain that the legal system had been “weaponized” and suggested the case amounts to “election interference.”
Witness tampering is a crime, and a judge certainly can attempt to prevent a defendant from attacking witnesses.
Merchan’s gag order prohibited Trump from making public statements about potential trial witnesses’ involvement in the case. It also forbade him from making public statements of any kind about jurors, court staff, lawyers in the case and relatives of prosecutors and the judge.
Trump and his allies have been going after Merchan’s daughter, claiming the judge is compromised because his daughter is a Democratic political consultant. Trump has called her a “rabid Trump hater.”
Trump is permitted to criticize Merchan himself and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg — and he has repeatedly done so.
Critics were baffled by Dershowitz’s head-spinning take.
“This is literally the discretionary authority of a judge to do,” tweeted national security attorney Mark S. Zaid.
Reminder that Alan Dershowitz represented Jeffrey Epstein, O.J. Simpson, and Donald Trump.
— Blue Georgia (@BlueATLGeorgia) April 17, 2024
That’s literally the point of a gag order.
— CB— (@ConservBlue2020) April 17, 2024
Homie got his law degree at Trump University
— actingliketommy (@actingliketommy) April 17, 2024
#Fresh
Lawyers: Beware the Trump Zone
Alan Dershowitz was a respected Constitutional legal expert m my, prominent Harvard law professor, long term Democrat and supported Hillary Clinton in 2016. Then Dershowitz entered the Trump Zone and hasn’t been the same since.… https://t.co/UqLepycB3y
— Feisty & Fierce (@LMerritt1) April 17, 2024
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