If a politician accepts a bribe for something he was going to do anyway, he is still guilty of taking a bribe.
And please note that a bribe can be in the form of something other than money.
The Senate was the place to do the nuance if he really meant it.
When he became a torture advocate then apparently talking to him was fine.
He said he isn’t invited to parties in the Hamptons any more. Poor him.
A reporter asked Schumer if he took classes from Dershowitz when he was studying law at Harvard, and Schumer said, “No, that’s why my arguments are cogent.”
One thing I’ve learned about lawyers is that they don’t actually believe in anything except winning arguments. They see no problem with saying one thing in one case and the complete opposite in another - to them, it’s just playing different moves in different games.
In fact — or so I’m told by a TV lawyer commenting on Dershowitz’s hypocrisy — lawyers are ethically obligated to stick to whatever fake argument serves their client-of-the-day. Indulging in truth or consistency against their client’s interest might result in disbarment.
if you believe that then you clearly didn’t listen or didn’t understand what what dershowitz was saying during his 20 minutes of explanation and examples. If you have bribery if you have treason and other like high crimes and misdemeanors then certainly you can be impeached. But the action itself must fall within the scope of that. If that kind of bank is committed doesn’t matter that the motive is mixed - if the president did it because he also wants to be re-elected. it’s an impeachable offense under the Constitution. Citing the word quid pro quo doesn’t do that. Dershowitz is making the argument that quid pro quo actions have taken place throughout presidential history. To allow a quid pro quo claim where the president may gain some political advantage, by itself, to be an impeachable offense, creates the possibility that future presidents will be impeached by the majority party. Not because a crime has been committed as required by the Constitution but because of political acts. This, at least in my opinion, doesnt isound anything like what the OP claims dershowitz said.
(Bolding mine.)
I’ll give you that. This sure doesn’t sound like what Deshowitz said, as the OP claimed.
If so, Dersh argued against a straw man, since the Articles of Impeachment allege far more than a mere “quid pro quo claim”.
Silent Cal: «I do not choose to run.»
To play Devil’s Advocate here, part of lawyers’ professional ethos is a belief that if both parties are represented by competent attorneys to the best of their abilities, and all the evidence is out on the table, then justice will emerge from the resulting trial. That’s a big piece of why some lawyers will defend obviously guilty people- they feel like they need legal representation, regardless of their personal opinions about guilt or innocence.
So they do just that- defend their clients to the best of their ability within the bounds of the law, regardless of whether what they said contradicts something they said in a previous trial- in the majority of cases, that’s not admissible or relevant in the current one.
Now that whole professional ethos hinges on equal representation, which is rarely the case, and occasionally it means that justice does NOT come out of the process.
Delete - duplicate
The argument doesn’t lend itself to individual quotes like in post #12.
Dershowitz gave a two hour long presentation Tuesday night. This response was a 5 minute one giving basically the same response he gave earlier.
He started by arguing the strawman that you suggest that a quid pro quo is bad. Not so, for the obvious reasons: we do it all the time.
So then the argument is, and he quoted the House Managers, if you engage in a quid pro quo for any reason that could help you personally, then that is bad. Even if in the back of your mind you are doing it for personal reasons. But Dersh argued, almost everything a politician does has mixed motives. He or she may believe that X is both good for the country and good for him/herself personally. If you condition aid for Israel on dismantling settlements, that may be good for the country, but the bit of evil in all of us might be causing it, in part, because of a feeling that doing so will help the politician get re-elected. Then Dersh made the quotes attributed to him in post #12.
Importantly, then his five minutes had expired and Roberts cut him off…
Note that he did not say that taking a bribe or committing treason or committing a like crime which solely helps you personally is not an impeachable offense.
If you look back to Tuesday, he continued and said it in the context that in mixed motive cases you cannot properly impeach the president simply because you believe that part of it was done out of a desire for personal political benefit because everything good thing a politician does is accompanied by such a belief.
Of course, the TV news plays the 10 second clip out of context and makes it appear that he said that the president can do absolutely anything he wants for corrupt personal gain and nothing can be done. That’s the world we live in of 10 second soundbites and Dersh has every right to be upset because it was intentionally ripped from its context.
IOW, the short version of his argument would go something like this. Suppose I give $10 million to the local community college. On one hand that is a selfless act because I am helping so many young people get a better education, yet at the same time, I also get the benefit of everyone in the community thinking I am a great guy and seeing the Ultravires Aquatic Center name in big letters on a building.
If you are predisposed not to like me, is it proper just to jump to the bad motive I had and claim that is the only reason I did it? Maybe I did it 99% for the bad motive, but you cannot just point to that and say that it must be my sole motive because then you have created a standard where anyone who donated to a charitable cause can be accused of a bad motive.
Disagree with the argument if you will, but he did not say that a president can do anything at all as long as he thought it helped his reelection chances.
It’s a straw man argument. Dersh even said that the actual content of the Articles of Impeachment should be ignored – only the top-line matters. It’s utterly bogus and ridiculous. Trump is accused of far more than just a mere “quid pro quo for personal benefit”. The Articles of Impeachment make it clear that he is being accused of bribery and wire fraud, among other things, rolled up into “abuse of power” (in addition to the obstruction charge).
Dersh is an idiot making an idiotic argument, probably because as a likely rapist, he’s seeking comfort in the shadow of a fellow likely rapist with more power and popularity than he has.
But he wasn’t charged (or impeachment for) bribery and wire fraud. You cannot just add accusations in the middle of a trial. That goes right to the heart of the due process argument.
It’s amazing how this guy has been a scholar at Harvard Law School of all places for over 50 years, but people on the internet have decided that he is a moron. I’ll be the first person to say that no matter someone’s scholarship, they are capable of mistakes and their arguments can be critiqued, but to dismiss him as an idiot? He’s fooled a hell of a lot of people, then, and made a lot of money for being such a shitty attorney.
And sexual assault? Really? In this thread? Respectfully, not everything revolves around sexual assault. And even if we assume that Dershowitz is the biggest rapist that ever lived, it has nothing to do with the quality of his argument. That is such an overwhelming ad hominem attack that is irresponsible in quality debate.
People change over time. At one time, Giuliani was a respected prosecutor. Now one wonders how he graduated from high school. Maybe Dershowitz was at one time a respected professor. But he hung out with the wrong crowd. He’s an old guy, and like a lot of old guys he spent too much time watching Fox and is now nothing more than a member of the 45 Cult. My jaw hit the floor when he argued that everybody thinks his election is in the national interest and therefore whatever you do in that endeavor is unimpeachable. Polish the turd all you want, but that’s what he said.
It’s not adding accusations – it’s right there in the Articles. That they don’t use the specific word “bribery” doesn’t make it any less of a crime. They describe in great detail the crimes of Trump, and none of Dersh’s arguments make that stuff go away. Dersh just said that the actual content of the Articles should be ignored. He really said that!
It’s irresponsible of our system and society to include likely rapists like Trump and Dershowitz in its highest workings, but they’re right there nonetheless. I won’t stop reminding folks of the kind of people they’re supporting. Even with all the other terrible things going on, there is nothing more important in our society right now than fighting sexual assault and rape, and that means continually reminding folks how little our society does about the powerful and wealthy who commit sexual assault and rape.
If this is the argument, then it would seem to mean that you can’t judge a President’s decision making by the motivations that the President claims, since those motivations are always only part of the calculus for why he did what he did; no matter what justification the president provides, there’s also the (‘entirely sensible’) determination as to how it helps the President maintain popularity/win an election.
Therefore, you are begging for others to come in and provide context by discussing their conversations with the President, viewpoints on the President’s actions, and the impact on these decisions.
In other words, if Dershowitz is arguing that it is ridiculous to impugn a President that you don’t like just because he made decisions that benefited him, then it is equally ridiculous to exonerate a President because he or his supporters assure us that he had the country’s interest at heart.
Instead, we should be ignoring that and hearing from all of the people who had concerns, raised questions, and sounded the alarm so that we can hear their perspective and, only then, decide if their views have merit.
To take your charity donation example:
You donate $10 million to a charity. You and your friends all publicly proclaim that it’s because you are kind and generous. Your opponents think it’s a scam to get out of paying money you owe.
How to reconcile this? Do we just discount the claims of a scam because, even if you are hiding money to avoid debts, you also realize that the charity will be happy to get $10 million? If that be the case, then any criminal, shady, or immoral act is absolvable by pointing out that it benefited somebody, while simultaneously ignoring those it hurt.
Or, since people are proclaiming a bad purpose, do we conclude that there can’t possibly be a noble legitimate reason instead? Clearly not; if these people who are impugning your reputation have their own ulterior motives, this might be an illegitimate claim.
What to do? What to do?
I know, and I bet Dershowitz would agree:
Let’s call the witnesses who were actually in the room when you decided to make the donation: Did they hear you explain why it was done that way?
Let’s review your financial books to see if any of the concerns being raised are fair: Do you actually owe anybody money?
If people are claiming you owe them money, maybe we do need to hear from them: Are they identifying legitimate debts?
…
Clearly, Dershowitz is saying we need more evidence, we need to hear from the principals involved, and we need to see the paper trail that confirms the reasons that things happened how they did.
What you’re describing here isn’t the same thing though, is it?
You’re saying that Dershowitz argued that if something a politician does has a public benefit, and a personal benefit, then the fact that a public benefit exists is enough to justify the action alone. But that’s nonsense – consider a president who owns a bunch of hotels (unlikely, right?) who directs the FBI to look into allegations against Conrad Hilton. The Hilton family is, of course, upset by this abuse of power, claiming that this hypothetical president is using public funds for personal benefit, namely that people will avoid Hilton hotels in favor of the president’s own brand. The president’s defense is that he’s just trying to root out bad people.
That’s a dumb argument, but it doesn’t address the key silliness that Dershowitz actually said, which is that reelection in and of itself can never be considered a personal benefit because politicians are so full of themselves.
To change your example slightly, there’s a difference between a mayor signing off on a major (city funded) community college expansion because it will make him look good, and doing so because he’s financially invested in a construction company that’s earmarked to get the work. The former is just the nature of politics, the latter is straight up corruption. Likewise, there’s a difference between him signing off on the expansion because it will make him look good, and doing so because it will just so happen to demolish a voting registration center in a community that tends to vote against him.
Dershowitz seems to be arguing that it’s OK for the mayor to have the voting registration center demolished even if everyone publicly understands it’s in the mayor’s reelection interest, because the mayor is so self-centered and delusional he thinks himself getting elected is in the public interest.
He said it because he knows that a lot of voters are hopelessly cynical and accept that what he said is essentially true. A lot of voters accept that all presidents are hopelessly corrupt and that probably most in Trump’s position would abuse power to ensure their reelection.
The Republicans are arguing that people should assume there are no good guys in politics; there are only those who can help your pet causes; that there is no such thing as national interest or the public interest; there is only self-interest and that the Republicans at least have the integrity to finally come out and make it obvious.
This is how democracy ends: when people believe that their vote doesn’t mean shit.