House impeachment managers and President Donald Trump's defense team are in the throes of answering questions from Senators regarding their case for or against the conviction or removal of Donald Trump, who was impeached by the House of Representatives late last year.
One of the crucial questions the Senators are asking is what motivated Trump to withhold aid from Ukraine to force politically beneficial investigations. Was it to root out corruption, as his defense counsel insists? Or was it to smear his possible 2020 rival, former Vice President Joe Biden?
The defense counsel erroneously argued that if Trump's request was, in any degree, done for the interest of Americans instead of personal interest, the offense is unimpeachable.
Trump lawyer Alan Dershowitz—also a lawyer to the deceased child rapist Jeffrey Epstein—took that argument a step further.
He posited that it doesn't matter if Trump's hold on aid was to help his reelection campaign, because the President believes his reelection is in the public interest. Therefore, as Dershowitz claims, Trump believed he was acting in the public interest.
Watch the bizarre defense below.
Dershowitz said:
"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."
One doesn't have to be a legal scholar to see that this argument is fallacious.
If Dershowitz's standard applied, Nixon's orchestration of a break-in of the Democratic National Headquarters would have no problem, since he did it to get elected.
People didn't hesitate to point out the absurdity of the argument.
What a strange timeline we find ourselves in.
For an inside look at Trump's ineptitude, corroborated by 200 interviews, you can buy A Very Stable Genius here.
Jane Rosenberg
Jane Rosenberg
@arianagrande/Instagram
@arianagrande/Instagram