It’s not often a former US president gets charged with criminal offences.
But Donald Trump has spent a lifetime proving himself the exception.
He stands accused of covering up hush money payments to a porn actress who
claimed she had an affair with him. He’s denied the charges – but are
they even worth the paper they’re written on? My guest is the American lawyer Alan Dershowitz,
former professor of law at Harvard. He says the case makes a mockery of
the US justice system. Alan Dershowitz,
welcome to Conflict Zone. Thank you.
Professor Dershowitz, let's talk about Donald Trump. You've brought out a new book which looks
at some of the legal issues facing the former president, indeed. Let's be clear, you're no
supporter of Trump politically. You haven't voted for him. You said you won't be voting for him,
but you think the charges he's facing are laughable and blatantly political. Why?
Well, let's take the charges in New York. What the DA in New York is basically saying...
The district attorney? The district attorney of
New York basically is saying when somebody pays hush money to prevent an allegation of
an adulterous affair from being made public to his wife, to his family, to his voters,
to his business associates, he must immediately put the exact reason why he paid that money in a
corporate public form. Nobody in history has ever done that. Nobody in history will ever
do that. It's an absurd charge. It's selective prosecution. I am not in favor of Donald Trump.
I hope he loses this election. And I also hope if there are charges that are valid against him,
that he's prosecuted and convicted. But I don't want to see the criminal law stretched,
the Constitution contracted, in order to convict Trump. It's a very great danger, particularly it's
a great danger because Trump is an easy person to go after because he has so many flaws and
fallacies. But the distinction between voting against somebody, which I do, and prosecuting
them for a non-crime, is a very serious one. And I want to maintain that line very strongly.
If you're right, how is it that the US legal system is so open to abuse that a high-profile
prosecutor like the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg can get away with,
as you put it, a blatantly political set of charges that have no merit?
That's a very dangerous precedent, isn't it? Oh, it is. And it starts with President Andrew
Jackson back in beginning of the 19th century. America foolishly accepted the concept of voting
for prosecutors. We elect prosecutors. It's absurd to elect prosecutors. No other country,
no other democracy in the world elects prosecutors and elects judges. And so you have prosecutors who
are Democrats or are Republicans, and they follow their constituents. And you have people like the
district attorney and the attorney general of New York running for office on the promise to
get Trump. The name of my book, "Get Trump" is not original with me. It comes from the campaign
promises of the district attorney. It would be unthinkable in Germany, unthinkable in Great
Britain, unthinkable in France for a prosecutor to run for office, number one. And number two,
promise in advance that he was going to get somebody and then rummage through the statutes
to try to find something against him. And when he couldn't find anything in the statute books
to create a crime. So the American criminal justice system, which I have been teaching about
and practicing for 60 [years], is in great danger. And I want to do something about preventing that
while also maintaining my strong opposition to Donald Trump as a candidate and as a president.
So how do you take the politics out of the US legal system? If the courts
are stuffed with political appointees. You stop electing prosecutors and you stop
appointing them and you start appointing them on the merits. You start creating civil service jobs
in which people get promoted as prosecutors based on their— the quality of their work, not on the
political positions they take. The United States legal system, particularly its criminal justice
system, is in desperate need of reform. It is one of the worst systems today among
Western democracies. And this is from somebody who's been practicing and thriving – you know,
done very well, made a lot of money and successfully defended a lot of people under
our criminal justice system. I may be one of the most successful criminal lawyers in
American history. And yet I'm very critical of the American system of justice. It needs a thorough
reform from top to bottom. Is it going to get it?
No, it's not going to get it because people don't care about criminal justice. People don't care
about judicial reform. That's my point about both Trump and about what's going on in Israel.
They use judicial reform as a way of achieving their political ends. Justice for me, but not
for the - free speech, for me, but not for the- the legal systems are not up to the challenges,
and that's been true since Greek democracy started. It's a work in progress, and it's not
proceeding in the right direction. I have to tell you that I think the German system of criminal
justice now is far superior to the American system of criminal justice in many, many ways. There's
far less discretion among prosecutors. Prosecutors are more qualified. The system seems to be more
just than it does in the United States. And so there are things that I think Americans can look
to Europe to borrow. And the criminal justice system is one of them. The jury system works in
the United States. Juries work, but the judicial system, judges and prosecutors, don't work.
You've said Trump's case reminds you of your time dealing with civil rights in the south of
the country, where if the sheriff said you'd spat on the on the sidewalk and charged you with it,
there's no chance you'd get acquitted by an all-white jury. “Everybody knew that”, you said,
“you were innocent, but everyone knew you were going to get convicted.” Is it still like that?
No, no, no, not at all. We've had a tremendous change. I would say the 2 or 3 major changes
since I've been a young man in the United States has been the end of Jim Crow and segregation in
the South. Today, the South, many of the southern systems are quite good compared
to other systems. So that isn't the case ... But Trump's case reminds you of that system?
It does remind me of it in the sense that you can't get a fair jury trial in Manhattan where
people voted for the district attorney on the promise that he would get Trump.
Now these same people are going to serve on juries and they're going to try to help the
district attorney who they voted for get Trump. What is it— 87% of people in Manhattan voted
against Trump. The case should be moved to a different area where it's more like 50:50...
Because he can't get a fair trial in New York. Is that it?
In Manhattan he can't get a fair trial. No, no. I can tell you that Abraham Lincoln,
Daniel Webster, Jesus Christ and Muhammad could not get him an acquittal in the city of New York.
Maybe a hung jury, possibly a hung jury. But you're not going to get 12 jurors who will say,
we are willing to be the person to let Donald Trump go free and become the next
president of the United States. There's so much opposition to Trump in New York. Understandable.
Okay, you represented Trump during his impeachment proceedings at the Senate.
You paid a price for that, didn't you? You said you were subject to punishment, cancellation and
a bar complaint. Your family was also attacked. Who instigated these attacks against you?
Oh, people like Larry David, who was a comedian in New York, very popular and very famous. People
organized efforts to prevent me from living my life. People have gone to restaurants that I
frequent and said, if you continue to serve Alan Dershowitz and his family, we won't go
to the restaurants. This is McCarthyism, the old fashioned McCarthyism. Because I defended
somebody, I am somehow subject to attack and bar complaints and criticism. And it's organized by
people on my side of the political spectrum, the Democratic Party, the National Lawyers Guild,
left wing agitators in the United States. Trump is a very divisive character. And and there is such a
thing as as Trump derangement syndrome. It's very difficult to have a rational conversation about
Donald Trump. If you say to somebody, well, Donald Trump was a bad president, I'm going
to vote against him, but he did some good things A, B, C, people will will scream at you and yell
at you. You can't have a rational conversation about Donald Trump, certainly not in the city
of New York or in the state of Massachusetts, where I spent 50 years teaching at Harvard.
Do you see other trials coming Trump's way? What are the chances that he might face prosecution
over his alleged attempt to overturn the 2020 election result in Georgia? There was this
leaked conversation with Georgia's Secretary of State, where he tried to pressure the man
to find additional votes to flip the result. There's also his role in the January 6th riots,
if there is a role that he played. Do these incidents still pose legal dangers for him?
Without a doubt. In my book "Get Trump" I go through all four of them, and what he did on
January 6th was terrible, inexcusable. And he did bear moral responsibility for what happened in
the Capitol thereafter. But he used the words, "I want you to go and demonstrate peacefully
and patriotically". And that brings his speech within the First Amendment. And so therefore,
I don't think there is a legitimate case against him for January 6th. As far as Georgia
is concerned, he said he wants people to find votes, not create, manufacture or concoct, but
to look to see if there are any uncounted votes. Whatever he meant, I don't know. He may have meant
something different, but that's what he said. The strongest case against him is in Florida, where he
did possess classified material improperly. And the problem with that is political. It'd be very
hard to prosecute him without also going after President Biden and former Vice President Pence,
who also had classified material in their possession. But he's in danger. There are
four cases that are actively prosecuting, being investigated and may be prosecuted. I think that
the weakest case is New York, but that may be the one that results in his conviction, because of the
bias of New York jurors. It will be reversed on appeal, but by the time it's reversed on appeal,
will already have the next election. So when when a democratically elected district attorney goes
after the man who's running against the Democratic president of the United States, he had better have
a very, very strong case with a smoking gun. In this case, there is no strong case. The case,
even opponents of Trump admit, is an extremely weak case. And so it will be a weak case that may
very well interfere with the next election. Look, I don't think Trump will be the next president of
the United States. I don't think he has the votes among the general public to be elected again.
You're not worried that all these poor cases somehow make him more
electable because he can play the victim? More nominatable by the Republicans because
he can play the victim among Republicans. But I think independent voters will look to this the way
I look to it. No, he shouldn't be prosecuted, but nor should he be elected. I don't think
it's a good reason to vote for somebody that he's been— that he's being falsely prosecuted.
Alan Dershowitz, it's been great to have you on Conflict Zone.
Thank you very much indeed for your time. You've asked me hard and great questions
and I always enjoy answering hard questions. So thank you for your excellent, excellent questions.
Thanks very much indeed. Thank you.