"I wish I could designate myself as a 'foreign-policy Republican,' but there’s no such option, so I have to go whole hog."

"By registering as a Republican rather than an independent, maybe I can have some influence on moving some Republican policies toward the center. I have given up on trying to change the Democratic Party. My main goal is to send a message that many traditional Democratic voters can’t accept what it is becoming—a replica of left-wing European parties that are hurting their countries."

Writes Alan Dershowitz, in "Why I’m Becoming a Republican/I first registered as a Democrat in 1959. The party’s hostility to Israel is too much" (Wall Street Journal).

"[Trump] found it interesting as an intellectual issue. Do I think he’s going to run for a third term? No, I don’t think he will run for a third term."

Said Alan Dershowitz, quoted in "Can Trump run for a third term? It’s unclear, says Harvard professorAlan Dershowitz spoke to the president about the constitution at the Oval Office this week and says Trump 'found it interesting as an intellectual issue'" (London Times).

"it" = Professor Dershowitz's new book, "Could President Trump Constitutionally Serve a Third Term?"

Dershowitz's position on the subject: "It’s not clear."

Which is more likely:

Trump will run for a third term if he thinks he can get away with it.

Trump is interested in intellectual issues.

 

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"Following days of legal threats and accusations of antisemitism lobbed at the owners of Good Pierogi after last week’s incident when the vendor denied him service, Dershowitz showed back up..."

"... on Wednesday to once again purchase some potato-stuffed dumplings in 'an effort to try to restore community.'"

I'm reading "Alan Dershowitz once again denied pierogi as Martha’s Vineyard residents chant ‘time to go’/‘I am very surprised that you’re here because of the things that you’ve been saying about us and the business online,’ the pierogi vendor told Alan Dershowitz on Wednesday" (Independent).

We're told there was a "large crowd" that chanted "Time to go! Go home Alan!"

"As for Dershowitz’s antisemitism claims, [the pierogi vender Krem] Miskevich noted that they are Jewish and have immediate family members in Israel, noting that friends call them 'Rabbi Krem' and that they have personal relationships with other rabbis on the island. 'Finally, we don’t back down to bullies – no matter their size,' Miskevich concluded the Tuesday night post."

There are some photos of the encounter at the link, and what jumps out at me is that Miskevich and Dershowitz are smiling at each other. Pleasantly, I think. Not villainously. 

"She is the Rosetta stone. She knows everything. She arranged every single trip, and if she was just given… immunity, she could be compelled to testify."

Said Alan Dershowitz, quoted in "Trump’s MAGA allies zero in on Ghislaine Maxwell as Epstein furor persists/The intensifying focus on Ghislaine Maxwell represents the latest turn in a winding case that has long been a focus of conspiracy theorists" (NYT).

I'm sure her testimony is valuable, but I see at least 5 problems with the Dershowitz assertion: 1. She may have misunderstood or misperceived what she witnessed when she witnessed it. 2. She will have forgotten some things, 3. She may misremember when she attempts to recall when she is questioned now, 4. She has so much reason now to lie, distort, or at least shape her story to serve her obvious self-interest, 5. Arranging a trip doesn't mean that you know everything that happens everywhere on the plane and at the destination.

ADDED: I know what I've listed are typical problems, and of course, Professor Dershowitz know what they are, but he's the one who chose to say: "She knows everything."

Now doesn't Bill Clinton need to sue The Daily Mail... or is that exactly what he must not do?

I'm reading "Bill Clinton sent 'warm and gushing' letter for Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday - as Trump sues over claim he also wrote a 'bawdy' note for paedophile's half-century" in The Daily Mail.

Bill Clinton wrote a 'warm and gushing' letter which was included in Jeffrey Epstein's infamous 50th 'birthday book', The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

The former US president was one of hundreds who contributed to a heavy leather-bound, gold-embossed album of letters that Epstein's ex-lover Ghislaine Maxwelltook more than a year to compile leading up to the landmark date.

Is this Book of Bawdy letters real or not? The Wall Street Journal, by presenting it as real, attracted a $10 billion lawsuit from Donald Trump. Wouldn't you think that would make The Daily Mail more careful about asserting that the book exists and that it contains a letter that is really from the person who purportedly wrote it?

"And so this judge just now denied him bail — on what ground? This guy's not going to run anywhere. It's absurd."

"[Sean Combs] has one of the nicest houses. I pass it by all the time. It's right near, not far from my little tiny condo in in Miami, Florida. He lives on Star Island. His  property is probably worth 40 or 50 million. I think he has two properties on the most expensive island, one of the most expensive islands in in the world. He's one of the most recognizable people. This decision by this judge was just vindictive. He didn't like the verdict. He thought there should be a conviction. And so, he's going to probably sentence him to a little bit of time in prison. He can't sentence him to a lot of time, but he'll probably sentence him to a little bit of time in prison in excess of the year he's already spent for having had bail denied.... He's going to come up with some pretense...."

Said Alan Dershowitz, on his podcast last night. 

"[Combs] was acquitted of anything involving violence, anything involving racketeering, anything involving, you know, sexual trafficking, all of that. He was acquitted!...  People don't go to jail for transactional sex for voluntary consensual sex based on the hope of getting an advantage. There is no such law.... Adult women should not be treated like children.

"From 25% in favor to 5 to 10% against.... It will be bad for America. It'll be bad for the world. So that was a foreign policy failure. He gets an F on that one."

"Canada — he gets an F. Sorry, sorry, I don't see any alternative. Please write to me and tell me if you're a Canadian or if you're American why he deserves better than an F ? Why should he have intruded on an election that was going to help the United States, going to help the world, going to help the economy? Why should he have intruded and turn the election around and turned it against the interests of the United States? So I don't see any justification — any justification — for that."

Said Alan Dershowitz, grading Trump on his first 100 days.

I'll bring up my question from yesterday: Does Trump know what he is doing? What if you had to argue that Trump knew what he was doing, that the seeming fiasco of the Canadian election was, in fact, exactly what Trump had in mind, a step in his genius plan?

ADDED: For the Annals of Things I Asked Grok (after quoting Alan Dershowitz):

Tell me the best justification. Maybe Trump is a genius and this is a multi-step process that he is seeing from a higher angle. Give him an A and explain why. 

Grok's answer here.

FROM THE COMMENTS: New Yorker takes the assignment seriously:

"Larry David had one of the stupidest op-eds in today's New York Times in which he compares Bill Maher having dinner with Donald Trump with having dinner with Adolf Hitler."

"Um, you know, Larry David, that's a form of Holocaust denial. Comparing Trump to Hitler is a form of Holocaust denial because Trump didn't have gas chambers, he didn't have shooting squads, he didn't take babies, and throw them into ovens, and if you're making a comparison what you're saying is Hitler didn't have any of those things either. So shame — shame — on you Larry David. You know, we used to be friends, boy. No more. And the one thing: about Larry David he stopped being funny, I don't laugh at his jokes anymore because I know they're not jokes. That's who he really is, so they're not jokes...."

Said Alan Dershowitz, trashing Larry David's trashing of Bill Maher's dining with Trump.

Here's David's NYT op-ed "My Dinner With Adolf" — free-access link — which begins:

Imagine my surprise when in the spring of 1939 a letter arrived at my house inviting me to dinner at the Old Chancellery with the world’s most reviled man, Adolf Hitler. I had been a vocal critic of his on the radio from the beginning, pretty much predicting everything he was going to do on the road to dictatorship. No one I knew encouraged me to go. “He’s Hitler. He’s a monster.” But eventually I concluded that hate gets us nowhere. I knew I couldn’t change his views, but we need to talk to the other side....

Read the whole thing. I gave you the free link. Now, I do think what Larry wrote there is funny. It just violates a rule of taste: You shouldn't compare anything to the Holocaust. 

We can talk about why that rule fell out of fashion. But whether Larry David is violating a strict and important rule or just going with the flow of the current taste within his hyper-elite stratum of society is a separate question from whether it's funny.

"Would [Harvard] recognize the Ku Klux Klan? For me, the National Lawyers Guild and the Ku Klux Klan are indistinguishable in terms of ideology...."

"If [Harvard] wouldn't recognize Klansmen or if it wouldn't recognize a group of sexists who called for the end of equality for women, then it shouldn't recognize the pro-Hamas National Lawyers Guild.... If this were the 1950s and there was a university say the University of Mississippi — Old Miss — that was forcibly integrated and it was allowing... some of the Klansmen who were students to harass black students, and the federal government came in and said 'Unless you stop Klansmen from harassing black students we're going to cut off federal funding,' people would be applauding that.'..."

Said Alan Dershowitz, in his latest "Dershow":

"Would the American public stand for [Trump using a tricky path to a third term]?"

"It would obviously be an attempt to technically circumvent the prohibitions of the 22nd Amendment. But you know that's what lawyers do all the time. Democrats and Republicans. You always try to find loopholes in in the law. Religious authorities do that. Secular authorities do that. Certainly,  constitutional lawyers do that all the time. For example, when the Supreme Court was about to write its decision saying you couldn't use race-specific affirmative action to give benefit to black applicants over white applicants, Larry Tribe issued a bunch of tweets and stuff figuring out how to circumvent that, how to get around that.... Would the American public stand for it if they felt that, yeah, we'd like Trump, yeah, we'd vote for him, we think he's probably the best president, but you know the framers of the 22nd amendment, when they said you can't be elected to the third term, I think they really meant you can't serve the third term but they didn't say it but they didn't say it um so it depends what is is and it depends what elect it is, and these are very very technical arguments but, hey, I'm a constitutional lawyer, I'm a law professor.... " 

"You pay all this money to these high-priced schools that are supposed to be of great esteem, and you can’t even go to class."

"You’re afraid to go to class because these lunatics are running around with covers on their face, screaming terrifying things. If you told us that’s what you intended to do when you came to America, we would have never let you in. If you do it once you get in, we’re going to revoke it and kick you out."

Said Marco Rubio, quoted in "The Khalil case is a threat to First Amendment rights/Donald Trump wants to deport a legal resident for his views. Who else will be punished for exercising free speech?" by the Editorial Board of The Washington Post. (Free-access link).

I thought Alan Dershowitz did a good job of discussing the complexities of this case:

"The Democrats... they're just yelling wolf... they're yelling wolf... they're screaming and yelling that there's a constitutional crisis..."

"Let me be very clear as a historian of the Constitution there has been one — one! — O-N-E — one! — count it:  one — one constitutional crisis in our history that our Constitution was incapable of solving and that, of course, was slavery...  The Constitution was not capable of resolving that issue without a war so we had indeed a constitutional crisis.... Compare that to what's going on today. If you listen to... Chuck Schumer you think we're going have a civil war. No! Listen to Donald Trump.... He said I will comply with every court order and then I will appeal it. And he didn't say this but obviously his lawyers... will seek a stay.... You can't allow hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of federal judges sitting in obscure parts of the country somewhere... in Rhode Island or somewhere in the south of  California to issue an injunction that covers everybody in the United States.... Democrats! Democrats! Don't yell wolf!... Don't tell us that there is no political recourse..... We have  three independent branches of the government — not a fourth. The bureaucracy is not in the Constitution.... It's very complicated. And president Trump for the first time has said let's look hard at these bureaucracies.... If you want to complain about what the administration is doing, that's your right...  but don't exaggerate...."

Says Alan Dershowitz in his excellent new podcast.

And Dershowitz thinks Trump is not necessarily wrong on the birthright citizenship question. He said "I'd love to argue it in front of the United States Supreme Court. I don't know how it would come out." That willingness has a limitation:

The Trump verdict is the worst verdict Alan Dershowitz has seen in his 60 years of studying legal cases.

"I still don't know what he was convicted of."

🚨BREAKING: 60 year long Democrat Lawyer Alan Dershowitz absolutely DESTROYS the wrongful verdict against Donald Trump in New York.

Everyone in America needs to see this. pic.twitter.com/GXS0PBfrGJ

— Philip Anderson (@VoteBidenOut) June 7, 2024

"What should Trump's lawyers do now?" — asks Alan Dershowitz...

... who can't serve as one of Trump's lawyers because he has a rule against representing anybody more than once, and he represented Trump in the first impeachment trial. So he's putting his legal advice out here in the open for all to see:

1. Dershowitz says Trump's lawyers should seek to expedite the sentencing. Make it next week! 

2. And if the judge says no to that, go immediately to the New York Court of Appeals — skip the Appellate Division — and propose an expedited appeal — 2 weeks to file briefs and argument within a month. With all this time pressure, we could get an opinion by August. Trump's antagonists have been stressing the need for proceedings to move quickly so that voters will get the information we need. Now, it will be Trump making that argument. Dershowitz doesn't talk about the value of this discourse in the political realm, but you can see it.

3. Dershowitz outlines the grounds for appeal, stressing the recent Harvey Weinstein case, where the New York Court of Appeals reversed the conviction.

4. If the Court of Appeals affirms, then take it to the Supreme Court and ask it to expedite the case. "If I'm Trump's lawyer, everything is speed, speed, speed, speed."

5. Dershowitz says "No, we don't" to Biden's statement that we all need to subordinate ourselves to the decision produced in the legal process. The legal system, Dershowitz informs us, is "deeply flawed." And: "This case was rigged."

ADDED: I received email from someone in a good position to know:

A couple of things about Alan Dershowitz’s recommendations for Trump’s lawyers. First, as to what seems like a lengthy adjournment for sentencing. New York law requires the Department of Probation to draft a pre-sentence report for any defendant convicted of a felony. This cannot be waived. All of us in Manhattan know that the department will not under any circumstance deliver such a report in less than six weeks. In addition, between now and July 11 there are two weekdays in which the courts and all other related agencies, including the Department of Probation are closed for business: June 19 (“Juneteenth”) and July 4. My point is that there are legal and practical reasons for the adjournment, other than the judge’s alleged instransigence.

Second, as one of your commenters has pointed out, there may be a way for the defense to bypass the intermediate Appellate Division, but I’m not aware of it. If there is, it most likely rests with the discretion of the Court of Appeals. Given the composition of the current Court of Appeals, I’d be surprised if the court exercised its discretion in this defendant’s favor.

On the other hand, I’ve been surprised by them before.

"The judge actually threatened to strike all of Costello’s testimony if he raised his eyebrows again."

"That of course would have been unconstitutional because it would have denied the defendant his Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses and to raise a defense. It would have punished the defendant for something a witness was accused of doing. Even if what Costello did was wrong, and it was not, it would be utterly improper and unlawful to strike his testimony — testimony that undercut and contradicted the government’s star witness.... Moreover, [Justice Merchan's] affect while issuing that unconstitutional threat revealed his utter contempt for the defense and anyone who testified for the defendant. The public should have been able to see the judge in action, but because the case is not being televised, the public has to rely on the biased reporting of partisan journalists. But the public was even denied the opportunity to hear from journalists who saw the judge in action because he cleared the courtroom. I am one of the few witnesses...."

Writes Alan Dershowitz, in "I was inside the court when the judge closed the Trump trial, and what I saw shocked me" (NY Post).

ADDED: Byron York has "The Trump trial suffers a nervous breakdown":

Having Costello testify was a last-minute decision by the Trump defense. He had knowledge of Cohen’s credibility, having been Cohen’s lawyer.... Costello testified that Cohen told him that Trump did not know about the nondisclosure agreement payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. “Michael Cohen said numerous times that President Trump knew nothing about those payments, that he did this on his own, and he repeated that numerous times,” Costello said....

That is important information, given that it goes to the heart of the case — that Trump allegedly, with intent to defraud, falsified records of the payments because he was also intending to commit some other crime that prosecutors have not yet specified. If Trump “knew nothing about those payments,” as Cohen said, according to Costello’s testimony, that would throw a big wrench in the prosecution’s theory of what happened.

Perhaps you have not heard about Costello’s testimony. If not, that was likely because everyone, including the press, got very excited about what happened later....

Go to the link for quotes from the transcript covering the material Dershowitz wrote about as an eyewitness.

"Justice Merchan acknowledged that jailing Mr. Trump was 'the last thing' he wanted to do, but explained that it was his responsibility to 'protect the dignity of the justice system.'"

"The judge said that he understood 'the magnitude of such a decision' and that jailing Mr. Trump would be a last resort. He noted: 'You are the former president of the United States, and possibly the next president as well.' ... Mr. Trump stared straight at [the judge].... The violation for which he was punished on Monday stemmed from an incident on April 22, when Mr. Trump [said the jury]... had been picked 'so fast' and was 'mostly all Democrat,' adding, 'It’s a very unfair situation.'... Although [those comments] came before the judge issued his first contempt order — and initially warned Mr. Trump of jail time — Justice Merchan appeared exasperated by the continued violations.... 'The last thing I want to do is put you in jail,' Justice Merchan said, adding quickly, 'But at the end of the day, I have a job to do.'..."

From "Judge Cites Trump for Contempt, and Says He Is Attacking the Rule of Law/Donald J. Trump again broke a gag order meant to bar him from attacking participants in his criminal trial, Justice Juan M. Merchan ruled. He threatened the former president with jail" (NYT).

I guess Trump also has a job to do — run for President. He doesn't want to go to jail, but at the end of the day....

And here's Alan Dershowitz,  yesterday, denouncing the judge for not understanding free speech law and imposing a prior restraint:

"Have no doubt, corrupting the U.S. justice system to punish a former president and current candidate nudges the country ever closer to tribalism, chaos and collapse."

Writes Alan Dershowitz, in "For all you Trump haters popping champagne over this dubious indictment, here's EXACTLY why it may collapse" (Substack).

If the attorney general appointed by the incumbent president authorizes the prosecution of the president's chief election rival, the evidence of a serious crime should be overwhelming. His guilt should be clear beyond doubt, so as to avoid any reasonable suspicion that the prosecution was motivated, even in part, by partisan consideration. The paradigmatic 'gun' must indeed be 'smoking'....

"There can't be one rule for Democrats and another for Republicans. So the question 'What about her emails?' is an appropriate one."

"Mocking it is no answer. Neither is the cliche 'two wrongs do not make a right.' A second wrong doesn't justify or excuse the first, but unequal treatment of two comparable wrongs should raise concerns about fairness and equality. Unequal treatment of two equal wrongs is a third wrong. The 'whataboutism' argument applies as well to the manner in which Trump loyalists such as Peter Navarro, Roger Stone and Paul Manafort were arrested. In comparable cases involving similar charges, the defendants weren't handcuffed, shackled or subjected to restraints generally reserved for those who pose a risk of violence or flight.... It is often argued that presidents aren't above the law, but neither are they beneath deserving fair treatment, as Bill Clinton can attest.... Just as [Hillary's] actions don't excuse Mr. Trump's, his don't excuse hers.... [U]ntil Mr. Garland fully and specifically answers the hard questions about what appears to be unequal application of rules and practices, 'what about her emails?' will be a pertinent question."

 Writes Alan Dershowitz, in "'But Her Emails'? A Defense of 'Whataboutism'"/Mrs. Clinton should take her hat off. Treating like cases alike is crucial to the equal protection of the law" (Wall Street Journal).

"Only a move as extraordinary as eliminating a constitutional right in place for half a century could transform the court into an institution like any other in Washington, where rival factions disclose secrets in the hope of obtaining advantage...."

"In an editorial last week, The Wall Street Journal expressed concern that Chief Justice Roberts was trying to persuade Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett to take his narrower approach. The point of the leak, then, may have been to lock in the five-justice conservative majority. 'I would be wary of jumping to a conclusion that the leaker is necessarily someone who opposes overturning Roe v. Wade,' said Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine. Kermit Roosevelt, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said the source was probably trying to increase the price of switching positions.... Professor Hasen said there was another benefit to the right from the disclosure of the draft opinion. 'This kind of leak could in fact help the likely future majority overturning Roe if it deflects the conversation to the question of Supreme Court secrecy and the danger of leaks to the legitimacy of the process'...."

From "A Supreme Court in Disarray After an Extraordinary Breach/The leak of a draft majority opinion overruling Roe v. Wade raises questions about motives, methods and whether defections are still possible" by Adam Liptak (NYT).

MEANWHILE: Alan Dershowitz tells Fox News: "I think this was leaked by a liberal law clerk who is trying to change the outcome of the case – either by putting pressure on some justices to change their mind or by getting Congress to pack the court even before June, which is very unlikely."

"Some may wonder why an innocent man would ever plead guilty. Anyone who knows how the system works in practice..."

"... would understand why an innocent man—or a defendant in a close case—might be coerced into pleading guilty. The cruel reality is that if a defendant pleads not guilty and is found guilty, the sentence will be far greater than if he had pled guilty—perhaps even 10 times greater. Moreover, in this case, it is alleged that the government threatened, if Flynn did not plead guilty, to indict his son. These are the kinds of pressures routinely used by prosecutors. Civil libertarians have long been critical of these pressures, but fair-weather civil libertarians refuse to object when these improper tactics are used against Trump's associates. Partisan hypocrisy reigns."

Writes Alan Dershowitz in "Flynn Was Innocent All Along: He Was Pressured to Plead Guilt" (Gatestone Institute).