Alan Dershowitz: ‘Idiots’ On CNN ‘Lied’ About My Trump Comments And I’ll Likely Sue Them; Hints At New 1A Media Standard

During this week’s episode of “The Sunday Special” with Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro, prominent attorney and former Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz revealed his plan to likely sue CNN for allegedly maliciously misrepresenting the speech he gave on the Senate floor concerning the impeachment of President Donald Trump.

According to Dershowitz, “idiots” on the network intentionally “lied” about him in an effort to ding the attorney’s credibility, (since he was on the side of Trump), suggesting the clip CNN ran of him was “doctored,” and not merely “taken out of context.”

“The case that you made in front of the Senate is not the case that CNN said you made in front of the Senate,” Shapiro told Dershowitz. “The case that CNN said you made in front of the Senate was effectively that if a politician of any sort does something in pursuit of their own re-election, then this is not impeachable activity.”

Shapiro argued that the clip was clearly “taken out of context,” but Dershowitz used stronger language.

“It was doctored,” he accused. “It was as if I said the following, let me tell you now what I don’t believe. I don’t believe a president seeking re-election can do anything, and CNN ran: A president seeking re-election can do anything.”

“That’s not protected by the First Amendment, and it shouldn’t be protected,” the attorney later emphasized, regarding CNN’s alleged actions against him.

“What CNN did is they took all of that out and they made it sound like I was saying [something else]. And then you had these idiots on CNN, people like Paul Begala, who said basically what I said was a president can do anything illegal,” Dershowitz continued, adding that CNN contributor Joe Lockhart was “another liar” who misrepresented him.

The attorney said he has information to back his suspicions that CNN misrepresented him intentionally, rather than ignorantly misquoting him.

“I suspect that what happened is, and it’s more than a suspicion, it’s based on information that I have, is that [Jeff] Zucker, the head of CNN, made a willful deliberate decision to have me say something that sounded idiotic in order to hurt my credibility on the hour and ten [minute] speech that I made in front of the Senate,” Dershowitz stated. “And they deliberately omitted what I had said about criminal conduct to make it sound like I was saying a president can do anything, and then everybody followed suit, everybody on CNN.”

With regard to the First Amendment, Dershowitz said you would not be “talking about actually changing the standard.”

“But we’d have to make new law, saying that, basically, if you use the words that were actually spoken, but you purposely, willfully, and with malice leave out words just before and just after that totally, completely changed the meaning, that’s not protected by the First Amendment,” he continued. “And I think that’s right.”

“I think we start small by looking at people who willfully and deliberately abuse the First Amendment for partisan or personal or financial benefit – that’s where you begin, and I think we can do that, okay,” added Dershowitz.