Alan Dershowitz, one of President Trump’s defense lawyers in the Senate impeachment trial, shot back at Sen. Elizabeth Warren after she accused him of providing an “unsupported” legal argument on Monday.
“His characterization of the law simply is unsupported,” Warren said of Dershowitz. “He is a criminal law professor who stood in the well of the Senate and talked about how law never inquires into intent and that we should not be using the president’s intent as part of understanding impeachment.”
Dershowitz, who supported the impeachment and removal of President Bill Clinton, said it is Warren, a fellow former Harvard law professor, who does not understand constitutional law.
“This says more about Warren than it does about me,” Dershowitz said. “She also willfully mischaracterized what I said, claiming that I spoke about ‘intent.’ I challenge her to find that word anywhere in my presentation. I talked about the difficulty of discerning mixed motives.”
Warren doesn’t understand the law.
My former colleague, Senator Warren, claims she could not follow my carefully laid out presentation that everybody else seemed to understand. This says more about Warren than it does about me. (1 of 2)— Alan Dershowitz (@AlanDersh) January 28, 2020
During his remarks before the Senate on Monday, Dershowitz argued that what Democrats have accused Trump of doing does not amount to an impeachable offense.
“If the president, any president, were to have done what the Times reported about the content of the Bolton manuscript, that would not constitute an impeachable offense,” he said.
The New York Times reported late Sunday evening that former Trump national security adviser John Bolton alleges in a new book that Trump told him he wanted to continue a temporary freeze on military aid to Ukraine while his associates worked to dig up dirt on his political rivals.
Democrats said that was an abuse of power and warrants Trump’s removal from office.
“You cannot turn conduct that is not impeachable into impeachable conduct simply by using words like ‘quid pro quo’ and ‘personal benefit,'” Dershowitz, who was brought on to Trump’s legal team to interpret the Constitution for the president’s benefit, said.
Warren, who is a leading candidate in the Democratic primary, echoed an argument House impeachment managers made last week: Trump intended to use his power as president to achieve a personal goal.
“Criminal law is all about intent,” Warren said. “Mens rea is the heart of criminal law. That’s the very basis of it. So, it makes his whole presentation just nonsensical. I truly could not follow it.”
(3 OF 3)
If Warren knew anything about criminal law she would understand the distinction between motives – which are not elements of crime—and intent, which is. It’s the responsibility of presidential candidates to have a better understanding of the law.— Alan Dershowitz (@AlanDersh) January 28, 2020
Dershowitz dismissed the senator from Massachusetts, accusing her of being intellectually dishonest.
“If Warren knew anything about criminal law she would understand the distinction between motives — which are not elements of crime — and intent, which is,” he said. “It’s the responsibility of presidential candidates to have a better understanding of the law.”
