With more and more Democrats screaming about impeaching Donald Trump, the president has made it clear that he would take any potential impeachment action to the Supreme Court. Fox News contributor and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz has said this is a sound plan in a new op-ed.
“The Mueller Report, despite being written by Angry Democrats and Trump Haters, and with unlimited money behind it ($35,000,000), didn’t lay a glove on me. I DID NOTHING WRONG. If the partisan Dems ever tried to Impeach, I would first head to the U.S. Supreme Court,” tweeted the president last month in response to talks of impeachment by Democrats.
The Mueller Report, despite being written by Angry Democrats and Trump Haters, and with unlimited money behind it ($35,000,000), didn’t lay a glove on me. I DID NOTHING WRONG. If the partisan Dems ever tried to Impeach, I would first head to the U.S. Supreme Court. Not only……
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 24, 2019
The president reiterated that thought when speaking to the press this week. Asked by a reporter before entering Marine One whether he thinks Congress can impeach him, Trump responded, “I don’t see how. They can because they’re possibly allowed, although I can’t imagine the courts allowing it.”
In a Friday op-ed for The Hill, Dershowitz said the president is closer to the truth and the law in this case than his opponents.
“Commentators have accused Trump of not understanding the way impeachment works and have stated quite categorically that the courts have no constitutional role to play in what is solely a congressional and political process,” wrote Dershowitz.
The professor says critics can laugh off Trump’s threat of court intervention, but they do so at their own risk.
“Our nonlawyer president may be closer to the truth than his lawyer critics,” he wrote.
Dershowitz then pointed to previous Supreme Court justices who have said the Supreme Court should intervene in a constitutional crisis, which the potential impeachment of Trump would be — especially since the Mueller report provides no solid evidence of wrongdoing by the man.
“Finally, as applied to the special case of the President, the majority argument merely points out that, were the Senate to convict the President without any kind of trial, a Constitutional crisis might well result,” former Supreme Court Justice Byron White said.
He added, “It hardly follows that the Court ought to refrain from upholding the Constitution in all impeachment cases. Nor does it follow that, in cases of presidential impeachment, the Justices ought to abandon their constitutional responsibility because the Senate has precipitated a crisis.”
“If the Senate were to act in a manner seriously threatening the integrity of its results … judicial interference might well be appropriate,” Justice David Souter, a George H. W. Bush appointee, also said.
Dershowitz added that the Supreme Court stepping into such a situation isn’t as crazy as people think. As an example, he says many “experts” laughed off the idea of the Supreme Court stepping into the 2000 presidential election to determine who actually won between Al Gore and George W. Bush, but the high court ended up getting involved in the end.
In the case of the Mueller report and the impeachment of President Trump, Dershowitz says no one should cling to “partisan certainty.”
“So no one should express partisan certainty regarding President Trump’s suggestion that the Supreme Court might well decide that impeaching a president without evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors is unconstitutional,” he wrote.
Via BPR
