Legal scholar Alan Dershowitz poked a hole in Democrats’ hopes that a federal judge’s decision to compel former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify before Congress would be a game changer in the impeachment investigation into President Trump.
“This has no substantive impact,” Dershowitz said on Fox News Monday night. “The judge went out of her way to say, ‘I am not ruling on the issues of privilege.'”
McGahn’s case has been watched closely by Democrats and supporters of the president as the White House has argued “absolute immunity” to prevent former officials from testifying in the Democrat-led impeachment process.
“This court holds that individuals who have been subpoenaed for testimony by an authorized committee of Congress must appear for testimony in response to that subpoena — i.e., they cannot ignore or defy congressional compulsory process, by order of the president or otherwise,” Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson said in a written opinion issued Monday.
An appeal of the decision is expected, and “all he has to do is show up,” Dershowitz said of the president.
Democrats, who issued a subpoena for testimony from McGahn, hope the former White House lawyer will reveal damning details about Trump’s alleged effort to obstruct special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and add fuel to their case that Trump committed crimes while in office. Mueller did not make a determination on whether or not Trump obstructed justices, but laid out 10 possible instances in his report.
An outspoken critic of Trump in the past, Dershowitz took exception to Jackson’s comment in her decision that the president is “not the king” of the society he leads.
“Of course he’s not the king. He’s far more powerful than a king,” Dershowitz argued. “The president has the power that kings have never had. The framers wanted it that way. That’s why they wanted for impeachment, very strict criteria to be met.”
The impeachment proceedings, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, centers on a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, during which Trump pressured the foreign leader to investigate a political rival. An intelligence agency whistleblower alleged the call was a quid pro quo between the United States and Ukraine, with foreign aid being used as a bargaining chip.
After five days of public testimony, Dershowitz said it is clear to him that while Trump might have abused his power when negotiating with a foreign leader, “there is no crime there” that warrants impeachment.
“We don’t live in a parliamentary Democracy where a parliament can just vote to remove a leader,” he said. “So this decision itself [on McGahn] has no big impact. All it means is people have to show up, and then they can invoke the privilege.”
