The Argument Of Alan Dershowitz Is Dangerous For American Democracy
Democracy often doesn’t die in a big bang, instead it dies because of the breaking of norms and a slippery slope. In the past few years in the US, we have been witnesses to this degradation of norms. Many of the ways of doing things that used to be considered standard practice have been swept away by the Trump administration, and many more are in the danger of falling.
The US now has a president who is not above blackmailing a foreign leader in order to promote his own personal interest, something that would have been shocking to any observer of American politics just a few years ago. Donald Trump’s actions in that infamous phone call with the president of Ukraine have gone so far, that the US House of Representatives decided to start impeachment proceedings against the sitting US president. This has happened only 4 times in history.
At the end of 2019, Donald Trump became only the 3rd president to be impeached. This will forever stain his legacy, however more dangers are lurking ahead. The impeachment proceedings have passed onto the US Senate, which is controlled by the Republican Party, a party which in the past few years has become completely dominated by Donald Trump.
So far, the Senate leadership has refused to call any witnesses to testify. This despite bombshell evidence coming to light in recent days. Lev Parnas, one of Rudi Giuliani’s henchmen, not only produced detailed plans of what he was up to in Ukraine, but he directly implicated Donald Trump in all of this, including releasing the recordings of a tape where the president calls for the then US ambassador to Ukraine to be gotten rid of.
Trump’s defense team has been all over place, arguing that it was a perfect phone call, then that maybe that it wasn’t perfect, but no quid pro quo happened, and now it has changed its tune again. Apparently, even if what Trump did happened as described by the prosecution, it doesn’t matter. The president can do whatever he wants!
This statement came from none other than Alan Dershowitz, Harvard professor, and a prominent constitutional lawyer who had joined Trump’s defense team in the Senate only recently. Dershowitz went out on the Senate floor, and argued that a politician who is seeking re-election is acting…
