On Sunday, Harvard Law professor emeritus and legal scholar Alan Dershowitz appeared on “Fox & Friends” with host Pete Hegseth to discuss the possibility that Democrats, should they take the House in the November midterm elections, would attempt to investigate or impeach Justice Kavanaugh:
HEGSETH: If the Dems take the House, they say they want to impeach. Can they? Should they?
DERSHOWITZ: They can’t. It would be unconstitutional to institute impeachment proceedings against a sitting justice for something that they accused him of doing when he was a 17-year-old private citizen. It would violate the core concept of the Constitution.
What they would do then is they would try to make up an argument that no, they’re impeaching him because he lied about what he did 35 years ago – and of course that’s what they tried to do with Bill Clinton, and the same Democrats complained about that, calling it a ploy.
Look, for the sake of the American people, we have to move forward. The Democrats have to stop trying to have these revenge inquisitions. Let Justice Kavanaugh sit; let him serve as a justice; let’s evaluate him as a justice. I won’t like some of his decisions. He wouldn’t have been my choice; I’m a liberal Democrat – but for the sake of the country, move forward …
At this point, Hegseth pulled a quote from a piece Dershowitz wrote for Fox News in which he stated that he wants to “see the House flipped,” but he doesn’t want to see “a Democratic House abuse its authority by conducting vengeful impeachment proceedings against Kavanaugh.”
Hegseth then asked the legal scholar:
From Maxine Waters to Nancy Pelosi to now this chair of the House Judiciary Committee, how can you as a liberal Democrat want the House to flip and also not want impeachment proceedings because that’s what they’re gonna do?
The following exchange then took place:
DERSHOWITZ: Well, I want to see checks and balances on the three branches of government, and I think having the Democrats control the House is a good thing for America, but I will fight tooth and nail against –
HEGSETH: But you wrote a book about not impeaching the president and that’s what they’re gonna try to do.
DERSHOWITZ: They shouldn’t do it, and I will fight them on that. That’s what [democracy is all] about. You don’t pick sides. I’m a Democrat, but I will fight the Democrats. There are Republicans who will fight the Republicans if they try to abuse their authority. That’s what checks and balances is about. It’s not like you pick a side and you always support everything on their side. It’s complicated. I’m gonna fight for a Democratic House, but once it happens, I’m gonna fight against the Democrats abusing [the] House.
Hegseth referred to this notion as a “cognitive dissonance,” to which Dershowitz replied:
I agree with that. The problem is it’s not everybody in the Democratic side who’s calling for that. That’s why I think if the Democrats come in, there should be and there will be an internal fight as to who controls the Democrats …
But I’m not gonna allow these radical Democrats, these hard-left Democrats, to make me leave the party that I’ve supported for 50 years of my life. I’m gonna fight within the party for justice and for [the American people].