Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz told Fox News on Thursday that former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s having attempted to invoke the 25th Amendment to oust President Trump in concert with the Department of Justice (DOJ) amounts to a “coup d’etat.”
Speaking with Tucker Carlson, Dershowitz said that if McCabe did indeed discuss the possibility of ousting President Trump with the DOJ, then the spirit of the Constitution was clearly violated.
“If [McCabe’s comments are] true, it is clearly an attempt at a coup d’état,” Dershowitz said.
The Harvard Law professor went on to say that even in the worst case scenario — Trump committing treason — neither the DOJ nor the FBI Deputy Director would be within their rights to enact a coup against the President, given that Congress has the power of impeachment.
“Let’s assume the President of the United States was in bed with the Russians, committed treason, committed obstruction of justice — the 25th Amendment simply is irrelevant to that,” said Dershowitz. “That’s why you have an impeachment provision [elsewhere in the Constitution]. The 25th Amendment is about Woodrow Wilson having a stroke. It’s about a president being shot and not being able to perform his office.”
Dershowitz added that invoking the 25th Amendment as a means for effecting a coup d’etat is “a grievous offense against the Constitution” and “a despicable act of unconstitutional power grabbing.”
“These people may have been well-intentioned, they may have believed that they were serving the interests of the United States, but you have to obey the law and the law is the Constitution,” Dershowitz said.
The Harvard Law professor’s comments on Fox News were so stirring that President Trump cited them on Twitter:
The president tweeted: “‘Trying to use the 25th Amendment to try and circumvent the Election is a despicable act of unconstitutional power grabbing…which happens in third world countries. You have to obey the law. This is an attack on our system & Constitution.’ Alan Dershowitz.”
One of the most chilling excerpts in McCabe’s revelatory “60 Minutes” interview is when interviewer Scott Pelley discussed meetings that were held at the DOJ about bringing Cabinet members together in order to oust Trump.
“The most illuminating and surprising thing in the interview to me were these eight days in May when all of these things were happening behind the scenes that the American people really didn’t know about,” said Pelley. “There were meetings at the Justice Department at which it was discussed whether the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet could be brought together to remove the President of the United States under the 25th Amendment. These were the eight days from Comey’s firing to the point that Robert Mueller was appointed Special Counsel. And the highest levels of American law enforcement were trying to figure out what do with the President.”
McCabe said he was “troubled greatly” by the thought of President Trump being a Russian stooge.
“I was speaking to the man who had just run for the presidency and won the election for the presidency and who might have done so with the aid of the government of Russia, our most formidable adversary on the world stage. And that was something that troubled me greatly,” McCabe said.