Alan Dershowitz: Trump could move to expunge 2019 impeachment after release of bombshell evidence
"It's never been done. I don't see any reason why it couldn't be done," the famed law professor told Just the News.
Famed Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz says he believes President Donald Trump could have grounds to expunge his 2019 impeachment in the House after bombshell new evidence revealed the intelligence community failed to disclose that his main accuser had the potential for bias, made a false statement and only had hearsay to back up his allegations.
Dershowitz, a Democrat at the time who worked to defend Trump at the impeachment trial that ended in the president's acquittal, said it would be "an interesting, novel approach" for Trump to go to Chief Justice John Roberts, who presided over the case, or Congress and ask for the impeachment to be reversed because the defense team was denied the right to confront his accusers with exculpatory evidence.
"It's never been done. I don't see any reason why it couldn't be done," Dershowitz said during an interview Monday night on the Just the News, No Noise television show. "Impeachment is a quasi-judicial procedure, whether you have to go back to Congress and ask them to expunge it or go to the courts.
"But I have to tell you one thing, history will expunge it already based on your work, because what you've done is you've created so much doubt about the credibility of the main accuser that it's hard for anybody to sit back now and say that was a just, a just impeachment, but I don't know that there's going to be any remedy," he added. "Maybe we should try to create one."
Just the News reported Sunday night that the U.S. intelligence watchdog developed derogatory evidence about the CIA analyst who prompted the 2019 Ukraine-focused impeachment, including that he submitted false information in his whistleblower complaint, offered hearsay to support his allegations and had the "potential for bias," according to memos newly declassified by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard at the request of Just the News.
Investigators for the Intelligence Community Inspector General documented several concerns about the Trump accuser's political motives, noting he admitted he was a "registered Democrat" who had worked closely with Joe Biden on Ukraine issues and who disliked some of the conservative figures in the president's orbit, the memos show.
The investigators also elicited an apology from the Trump accuser for misleading the probe and were acutely aware his allegations were based solely on second- and third-hand accounts about what Trump was alleged to have said and done.
“I do not have direct knowledge of private comments or communications by the President,” the alleged whistleblower, who claimed Trump improperly tried to pressure Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate Hunter Biden, admitted in his initial August 2019 intake form.
That stunning line on the limitations of the whistleblower's knowledge was not included in the nine-page letter then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., released in late summer 2019 that touched off a months-long political maelstrom and led to Trump's impeachment by a Democrat-led House and his eventual acquittal in the Senate.
You can read the documents here:
Supporting Documents_v3_Redacted.pdf
The revelations elicited shock and dismay across Washington, D.C., on Monday, including:
FBI Director Kash Patel's chief spokesman revealed the bureau is "closely' reviewing the new evidence about the Ukraine impeachment accuser and believes it mirrors tactics similar to the now discredited Russia collusion probe against Trump that began in 2016.
"The declassified impeachment memos show the so-called whistleblower behind the 2019 impeachment singled out Director Patel by name, relied on hearsay, submitted false claims, and had documented political bias — all of which was hidden from the American people," FBI spokesman Ben Williamson wrote on his X account.
Gabbard issued a statement saying she believed the former Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson had "weaponized" the whistleblower process and "manufactured a conspiracy" by forwarding the allegations against Trump to Congress in summer 2019 when there were serious concerns about their reliability and credibility.
“Despite a lack of any firsthand evidence, IC IG Atkinson proceeded to take actions to weaponize the Whistleblower process and exceed his statutory jurisdiction by ignoring Department of Justice guidance and relying on only second-hand testimony to ensure the whistleblower complaint was released to Congress, referred to the FBI, and leaked to the propaganda media,” Gabbard wrote.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe's office said the newly disclosed evidence confirmed his worst fears when he served in Congress that Trump was denied a fair proceeding when he was impeached by Democrats in the House before being acquitted in the Senate.
"As Director Ratcliffe made clear as a member of President Trump's impeachment advisory team in 2019, this impeachment was entirely baseless, unfounded, and brought in politically-motivated bad faith," CIA Director of Public of Affairs Liz Lyons said in a statement to Just the News.
And EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, who, like Ratcliffe served in the House when the impeachment took place, blamed Democrats for making an unnecessary mockery of a serious constitutional process.
"Just like the RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA collusion hoax, the clown show sham impeachment of President Trump in 2019 was a bullshit show trial of epic proportion to try to take out the duly elected President of the United States," Zeldin wrote on X.
Dershowitz said the challenge will be for Trump to find the right way to seek accountabliity and possible legal relief from a now six-year-old matter.
"These government officials will probably have to pay a political price, if not a legal price, for violating the Constitution, because that's what they've done. They violated the Constitution," he said.
"Number one, you can also always bring a civil lawsuit," he added. "This is a direct violation of the Constitution. The Sixth Amendment gives everybody a right to confront witnesses. The right to confront witnesses, the Supreme Court has held, includes the right to have the government provide you with the information they have necessary to confront those witnesses."
The Facts Inside Our Reporter's Notebook
Links
- Just the News reported Sunday night
- Supporting Documents_v3_Redacted.pdf
- FBI Director Kash Patel's chief spokesman revealed the bureau is "closely' reviewing
- FBI spokesman Ben Williamson wrote on his X account
- Gabbard issued a statement
- wrote.
- CIA Director John Ratcliffe's office said
- Zeldin wrote on X