During a Monday night appearance on the Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz was in rare form as he tore into the liberal media and the left for their double standard of outrage at President Trump’s affairs and hush money payments.
“I want everyone out there to imagine the following scenario,” Dershowitz began as he asked viewers to think of how the reaction would change if it was President Bill Clinton:
Let's assume when Bill Clinton was running for president, Paula Jones came up to him and said, “unless you pay me $130,000 I will reveal our affair.” And let's assume that Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton together did exactly what it is alleged that Donald Trump and Michael Cohen did together.
“I guarantee you that The New York Times, NBC, MSNBC would be railing against any prosecutor who dared to suggest that this was a violation of the campaign finance law. Everybody would be on the other side of this issue,” he declared.
He argued that Democrats would be the ones calling it a “witch hunt” and Republicans would be calling for Clinton’s impeachment. “We need a single standard,” Dershowitz pleaded. “If you would not go after Bill Clinton, don't go after Donald Trump. If you are going after Donald Trump, then you have to go after Hillary Clinton for everything that she allegedly did.”
Dershowitz wanted “everybody to apply the shoe-on-the-other-foot test” and noted that if the roles were reversed and Hillary won the election, “they would be screaming about how dare you expand criminal statutes! How dare you expand the criteria for impeachment!”
The example he provided was from earlier in Carlson’s show when one liberal guest was shouting about how Trump allegedly violated the Federal Corrupt Practices Act:
For example, one of your guests talked about the Federal Corrupt Practices Act. That applies when you bribe a foreign official. What they’re arguing is that there was a rumor that maybe somebody offered Putin a penthouse and a tower that Trump was thinking of building in Moscow. And if that had been done and it would a violation of the FCPA, the Federal Corrupt Practices Act. But it is all based on hypotheticals and maybes.
“Now all of the liberal-Democrats, fair-weather civil libertarians are saying, ‘the hell with the Constitution, the hell with civil liberties, put all that aside, get Trump,’” the Harvard Law professor exclaimed.
After detailing how the hush money payment then-candidate Trump paid to porn star Stormy Daniels was an extortion payment, Dershowitz took the liberal media to task for mischaracterizing how campaign finance reporting worked:
As far as it is concerned, it is a campaign that has to report. And if these payments had to be reported, they had to be reported after the election. The reporting time was after the election. So it couldn’t have impacted the election. So the absurd notion that he won the presidency by fraud and should be stripped of the presidency reflects incredible ignorance about the timing here and how these statutes operate.
And Dershowitz was correct and it’s not just a thought exercise. As the Media Research Center has documented time and again, the liberal media refuse to report on many Democratic scandals and try to spin the ones they do.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson Tonight
December 10, 2018
8:13:09 p.m. EasternTUCKER CARLSON: Professor, I got a couple of questions, but the first relates to the sound bite we played, is there a provision in the Constitution for stripping – whatever that means – stripping the presidency from a president who you think is illegitimate – whatever that means?
ALAN DERSHOWITZ: Sure, it is called the 25th amendment, but not on the grounds of illegitimacy.
I want everyone out there to imagine the following scenario. Let's assume when Bill Clinton was running for president, Paula Jones came up to him and said, “unless you pay me $130,000 I will reveal our affair.” And let's assume that Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton together did exactly what it is alleged that Donald Trump and Michael Cohen did together. I guarantee you that The New York Times, NBC, MSNBC would be railing against any prosecutor who dared to suggest that this was a violation of the campaign finance law. Everybody would be on the other side of this issue.
There’d be Republicans out there saying, “strip him of the presidency, impeach him, indict him”. Every Democrat would be saying, “this is a witch hunt, this is terrible”. We need a single standard. If you would not go after Bill Clinton, don't go after Donald Trump. If you are going after Donald Trump, then you have to go after Hillary Clinton for everything that she allegedly did.
For example, one of your guests talked about the Federal Corrupt Practices Act. That applies when you bribe a foreign official. What they’re arguing is that there was a rumor that maybe somebody offered Putin a penthouse and a tower that Trump was thinking of building in Moscow. And if that had been done and it would a violation of the FCPA, the Federal Corrupt Practices Act. But it is all based on hypotheticals and maybes.
I just want everybody to apply the shoe-on-the-other-foot test. If Hillary Clinton were president and Republicans were saying "lock her up", everybody was on the other side, they would be screaming about how dare you expand criminal statutes. How dare you expand the criteria for impeachment. Now all of the liberal-Democrats, fair-weather civil libertarians are saying, “the hell with the constitution, the hell with civil liberties, put all that aside, get Trump!”
That’s the most important consideration, get him by any means possible. This is such a danger to our constitutional system, that I would hope that true civil libertarians would rebel against it as I am.
(…)
DERSHOWITZ: Let's remember one more thing, a president – a candidate can contribute as much as he wants. If Bloomberg runs for president, he could announce tomorrow, “I'm not taking a nickel. I'm putting $1 billion of my own money into this campaign”. That’s perfectly legitimate. As far as it is concerned, it is a campaign that has to report. And if these payments had to be reported, they had to be reported after the election. The reporting time was after the election. So it couldn’t have impacted the election. So the absurd notion that he won the presidency by fraud and should be stripped of the presidency reflects incredible ignorance about the timing here and how these statutes operate.
