Tehran 30 january_US President Donald Trump's defense team has claimed at his Senate impeachment trial that American presidents cannot be removed from office for an action that could help their re-election, alarming Democrats and many legal scholars with the argument.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club(YJC)_Attorney Alan Dershowitz, a member of Trump's legal team, made the stunning argument on Wednesday during the first day of the question-and-answer session in the Senate trial.
Dershowitz, a retired Harvard University professor, told senators that every politician conflates his own interest with the public interest. “It cannot be impeachable,” he declared.
As US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts presided over the trial, Republican Senator Ted Cruz asked Dershowitz if it mattered whether there was a quid pro quo?
Simply, no, declared Dershowitz, who said many politicians equate their reelection with the public good.
"Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest," he said. "And if a president does something, which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment."
On Twitter, Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, a longtime critic of both Trump and Dershowitz, compared the argument to French King Louis XIV's declaration, "L'état, c'est moi," meaning, "I am the state."
"Accepting this argument would put us on a short path toward dictatorship, benevolent or otherwise. It’s incompatible with the government of, by, and for the people. It’s government by egomania," Tribe said.
University of Michigan law professor Barbara McQuade called Dershowitz's logic "absurd" and said, "If the Senate is to maintain any semblance of a check on presidential abuse, surely it must reject this argument."
The US Senate is expected to wrap up the initial phase of Trump’s impeachment trial on Thursday before turning on Friday to the explosive question of whether to call witnesses such as former national security adviser John Bolton.
Democrats pressed hard to force the Senate to call more witnesses to testify, but Republicans appeared intently focused on bringing the impeachment trial to a vote of acquittal, possibly in a matter of days.
Democrats argued Bolton’s explosive allegations in his upcoming book cannot be ignored.
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