Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Bob Bauer Takes Down Dershowitz Impeachment Defense (Easy Pickings)

Bob Bauer served as White House Counsel to President Obama. In 2013, the President named Bob to be Co-Chair of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. He is a Professor of Practice and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at New York University School of Law, as well as the co-director of the university's Legislative and Regulatory Process Clinic. He wrote this piece for the Lawfare blog (an excellent source of legal analysis). It includes this concluding paragraph:
"In the coming Senate trial, McConnell and Dershowitz are helping each other set a very different precedent of their own, one in which, as a matter of norms (McConnell) or constitutional law (Dershowitz), there is no room for removing a president for the serious abuse, or repetitive abuses, of the power of his office. And, under Dershowitz’s view, a president who is a murderer, a white supremacist, or a virulent misogynist, or who takes off for a year’s vacation in Rome, would also be free to serve out his or her term, or take into a reelection campaign the “vindication” supplied by a Senate acquittal."

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