Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz said Thursday that reports saying President Trump’s personal attorney was wiretapped suggest the U.S. is on the brink of becoming a surveillance state.
“I think we are moving closer and closer to the surveillance state where phone calls are tapped, where emails are secured without a real basis,” Dershowitz told Steve Kornacki on MSNBC.
“I think prosecutors should not be seeking wiretaps on lawyers’ offices, and search warrants and subpoenas for lawyers’ email files, unless they have very substantial evidence of very serious crimes,” he said.
Other panelists on the program said the decision to tap Michael Cohen’s phones may have been related to campaign finance law violations, given Trump legal adviser Rudy Giuliani’s revelations Wednesday that Trump repaid Cohen the $130,000 given to porn star Stormy Daniels as part of a nondisclosure agreement. They also pointed to the investigation being conducted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York into Cohen’s business dealings.
But Dershowitz said he was simply “expressing concern and distrust of government.”
“I don’t want to live in a surveillance state and I want to do everything in my power no matter who the target is to prevent this from occurring,” he added.
It’s unclear how long the wiretap was authorized for, NBC News reported Thursday, but federal authorities intercepted at least one call between one of the tapped phone lines and the White House.
Two sources also told NBC News the wiretap was in place before the FBI raided Cohen’s office, home, and hotel room in April.
