Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, a self-described liberal Democrat, told the U.S. Senate on Monday that even if the allegations in former national security adviser John Bolton’s book were true, it would not matter because his allegations do not constitute an impeachable offense.
“The claim that foreign policy decisions can be deemed abuses of power based on subjective opinions about mixed or sole motives, that the president was interested only in helping himself, demonstrate the dangers of employing the vague subjective and politically malleable phrase ‘abuse of power’ as a constitutionally permissible criteria for the removal of a president,” Dershowitz explained. “Now it follows it follows from this that if a president — any president — were to have done what The Times reported about the content of the Bolton manuscript, that would not constitute an impeachable offense.”
“Let me repeat: nothing in the Bolton revelations, even if true, would rise to the level of an abuse of power or an impeachable offense,” Dershowitz continued. “That is clear from the history, that is clear from the language of the Constitution, you cannot turn conduct that is not impeachable into impeachable conduct simply by using words like ‘quid pro quo’ and ‘personal benefit.'”
“It is inconceivable that the framers would have intended so politically loaded and promiscuously deployed a term as ‘abuse of power’ to be weaponized as a tool of impeachment it is precisely the kind of vague open-ended and subjective term that the framers feared and rejected,” Dershowitz added.
WATCH:
Dershowitz: Democrats' reliance on “subjective opinions” for impeachment is a dangerous precedenthttps://t.co/9vP0lOeGmB pic.twitter.com/M0lIh9BByK
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) January 28, 2020