Alan Dershowitz compares lawfare against Trump to McCarthyism, says the future is dark

Harvard Law School Professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz say the political lawfare against former President Donald Trump is a return to the McCarthyism of the 1950s.

"I know lawyers who have been asked to defend Donald Trump on First Amendment grounds," Dershowitz said on the Wednesday edition of the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show. "They would normally take the case, but they say, 'we can't afford it for our family because they're coming after our bar license.' It's exactly what happened during McCarthyism."

McCarthyism, also called the "Red Scare," started when Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., said he obtained a list of over 200 card-carrying communists that worked at the State Department. 

This resulted in congressional hearings about "communist subversion" in the United States and it led to repression and targeting of left-wing individuals for fear of spreading communist ideas. 

"I'm seeing a return of it now," Dershowitz said. "But it's much more dangerous today. Because the old McCarthyism ... it was a thing of the past where you were communist in the 1930s. The new McCarthyism is by young people, and it represents our future. So we have a dark future unless we can reverse this new McCarthyism."

Last month, Trump was found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree for his reimbursement of a $130,000 payment his then-lawyer Michael Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Trump had argued that this lawsuit and lawsuits on other states were part of a political witch hunt, which other GOP politicians have echoed.

Recently, Missouri GOP Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced he would be filing a lawsuit against the state of New York for using 'lawfare' against former President Donald Trump.

"This is a lawsuit to vindicate Missourians rights to have access [and] to and hear from a chosen candidate for President of the United States in the heat of a campaign in the most consequential election in this nation's history," Bailey said on a "Just the News, No Noise" special. 

Trump recently had a gag order lifted that was imposed on him by the New York judge. Trump's lawyers argued the gag order was stifling his campaign speech, and said it might limit his ability to respond to attacks from Democratic President Joe Biden during the first presidential debate. 

Bailey argued that lawfare and the politicization of the judicial system is a sign that the U.S. is headed towards a banana republic. 

"We are absolutely slouching towards a tyrannical dictatorial Banana Republic where the law becomes a joke," he said. We used to be a country of laws......certainly the law under the Biden administration has hastened this departure from those basic principles of the rule of law. "

Bailey said that Biden does not respect the rule of law and Trump needs to get back into office. 

"If the Chief Executive Officer of the United States of America doesn't support the law and doesn't support the United States of America, we lose credibility," he said. "President Trump put America first. He enforced the rule of law."

Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., suggested that if former President Donald Trump gets back into office, he should go after federal agencies like General Ulysses S. Grant attacked Richmond, Virginia, during the Civil War. 

"When Trump gets back in, he better go through these departments like Grant through Richmond — you can look it up. Grant, during the Civil War, went through Richmond pretty brutally," Burchett said on the Just the News, No Noise TV show.