Dershowitz says it would be an 'honor and privilege' to defend Trump if Dems try to impeach again

Alan Dershowitz, the high-profile liberal Democratic attorney who was on President Trump's legal team during his impeachment and acquittal last year, said on Friday that he would be willing to defend the president again if the House goes through with its threatened impeachment less than two weeks before he is set to leave office.  

Dershowitz said that he doesn't believe that Trump committed an impeachable offense and "I would be honored to once again defend the Constitution against partisan efforts to weaponize it for political purposes," he told The Hill. 

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, President-elect Joe Biden and other Democrats, plus some Republicans, believe that the president incited the mob to attack the Capitol building while Congress was in session to certify and dispute the Electoral College votes. 

Dershowitz, often referred to as a celebrity attorney, argued, according to Politico, that "Trump's encouragement of this week's Capitol riots was 'constitutionally protected' speech. He said it would be his 'honor and privilege' to take on the legal defense."

Another member of Trump's impeachment team was Robert Ray, a former independent counsel. "Unlike the last time, where they didn't even charge a crime, I could imagine that you could draft an article of impeachment that would actually make a legal argument that the president aided or abetted or actually elicited a riot," said Ray.

But in Dershowitz's view, "It's not a high crime or misdemeanor. What he said was protected by the First Amendment and it's not subject to removal under the 25th Amendment. He's not unable to govern, he's not incapacitated and I think grave dangers to the Constitution are being posed by those partisans who want to weaponize the Constitution for political purposes."