Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz said Wednesday he sees no threat of impeachment against President Trump based on claims from his former lawyer that Trump directed the payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels.
“We’re far away from impeachable offense or criminal offense on the part of the president,” he said on Fox News.
[Related: Alan Dershowitz: Michael Cohen’s guilty plea ‘not nearly as deadly lethal’ for Trump as many suspect]
.@AlanDersh: “We’re far away from impeachable offense, or criminal offense on the part of the president.” pic.twitter.com/dU0qalDOSQ
— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 22, 2018
Dershowitz said that while Democrats will likely clamor for impeachment, that remedy was designed for major crimes, not “minor derelictions” like the sort of campaign finance violations committed by most campaigns.
“You need a high crime and misdemeanor. Every campaign has violated some technical election law,” he said.
“I think the law on impeachment, at least according to my research, is fairly clear, and the president has not, at least up to now, committed any impeachable offenses,” Dershowitz said.
He said more specifically that Trump’s opponents would have to clear two major hurdles before having any success impeaching Trump. One is the legal hurdle of showing that Trump’s and Cohen’s actions constitute a crime.
“If Mr. Trump the candidate contributed several hundred thousand dollars to his own campaign to pay hush money to women who were either truthfully or falsefully alleging against him, that’s not a crime,” he said. “A candidate can contribute as much as he wants.”
“If he directed somebody to do it intending to pay it back, that’s probably not a crime,” Dershowitz added. Cohen told the court that his “candidate” directed him to pay Daniels hush money, after which he was reimbursed.
Dershowitz said another hurdle is whether Cohen himself is credible.
“The only evidence that the president did anything that might be unlawful, even arguably, comes from a man who’s admitted to be a liar, who has a lawyer-client privilege with the president, unless there are exceptions to it,” he said.
