Dershowitz: ‘Difficult to Imagine Anything More Unconstitutional’ Than Pelosi Withholding Impeachment Articles
By Craig Bannister | December 19, 2019
Alan Dershowitz (Getty Images/Lior Mizrahi)If House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) withholds articles of impeachment from the Senate as a negotiating tactic, it would be both unconstitutional and destructive, iconic liberal Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz declared Thursday.
“It is difficult to imagine anything more unconstitutional, more violative of the intention of the Framers, more of a denial of basic due process and civil liberties, more unfair to the president and more likely to increase the current divisiveness among the American people,” Dershowitz writes in an analysis published on Newsmax.com.
Dershowitz likens the Pelosi ploy to a prosecutor who indicts a person with no intention of bringing the defendant to trial – thus, violating his duty and denying the defendant his right to defend himself and clear his name.
Likewise, “An impeached president has a right to be tried and acquitted by the Senate,” Dershowitz concludes.
Dershowitz says Pelosi’s ploy fails the classic “shoe on the other foot” test, since Pelosi would never accept a Republican House employing the same tactic if it impeached a Democrat president, such as Hillary Clinton.
Read Dershowitz’s full analysis here.
