Alan Dershowitz said it was his professional duty to defend “despised” figures, just weeks after completing his impeachment trial defense of President Trump.
“My job is to represent the most despised, the most unpopular, the people who have very great difficulty getting a lawyer,” Dershowitz told an audience at the Beverly Hills Saban Theatre this week according to the Beverly Hills Courier. “I’m trying to defend the Constitutional rights of all Americans.”
The discussion, moderated by Rabbi David Baron and former 9th Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski, pitted Harvard law professor Dershowitz against Robert Shrum, a longtime Democratic operative.
Kozinski retired from the federal bench in 2017 while facing at least 15 accusations of sexual misconduct.
The Republican Jewish Coalition organized the event, and the audience was quick to cheer at any mention of Trump. When Dershowitz asked, “Should I sue CNN?” the crowd erupted. The lawyer objected, he said, to CNN’s omittance of three key words, “I don’t believe,” in a widely publicized quote attributed to him, which he claims should have read, “I don’t believe a president can do anything.”
He said at the event: “I do not believe the First Amendment protects a willful, deliberate, malicious, doctoring of a tape to make somebody say something the exact opposite of what he said.”
Shrum disagreed. “Don’t sue them. You’ll lose,” he said.
In Trump’s Senate trial, Dershowitz argued that abuse of power is not an impeachable offense and that impeachment requires evidence “of an actual crime, an argument that House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff labeled “absurdist.”
Mention of Schiff’s name on Monday night drew boos from the audience, which grew louder as Shrum predicted Schiff’s reelection to Congress. “Please, let’s have some civility,” Kozinski told the crowd. “We are here to listen and learn.”
