- Alan Dershowitz, one of the president's defense attorneys, argued the president can't be impeached for a quid pro quo designed to boost his reelection chance if he believes the reelection is in the public interest.
- "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," he said Wednesday.
- Dershowitz's comments sparked immediate backlash for equating Trump's own private interests with the US's national interest.
- "Either Dershowitz thinks that the Watergate break-in and subsequent coverup were not illegal or impeachable because, after all, the point was to secure the president's election," one constitutional law expert told Insider. "Or perhaps he has decided that Trump should be king."
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Alan Dershowitz, one of President Donald Trump's defense attorneys, argued during Wednesday's impeachment trial that a president can't be impeached for a quid pro quo designed to boost his reelection chances if he believes his reelection is in the public interest.
"Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest and, mostly, you're right - your election is in the public interest," 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."
Dershowitz also laid out a hypothetical scenario in which a Democratic president told Israel he would withhold all aid until the Israeli government stopped all settlement growth, or if he told Palestine he would withhold aid until the Palestinian government stopped "paying terrorists."
"And the president said: quid pro quo," Dershowitz added. "If you don't do it, you don't get the money. If you do it, you get the money. There is no one in this chamber that would regard that as in any way unlawful."
It's unclear where Dershowitz was going with this line of thinking, because it seems to confirm what House Democrats have argued: While previous US presidents routinely engaged in "quid pro quos" with other nations, they did so in matters of official foreign policy or national interest.
But according to witness testimony, documentary evidence, and Trump's and his allies' own comments, the president's efforts to strong-arm Ukraine into delivering investigations that would personally benefit him were not in the US's interest, but rather his personal interests.
'When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal'
More importantly, legal experts and critics of the president immediately took issue with Dershowitz's argument which suggested the president's defenders believe Trump can do anything he wants in service of his own political interests.
Frank Bowman, a constitutional-law professor at the University of Missouri School of Law, said Dershowitz's argument echoes President Richard Nixon's infamous claim that "when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal."
"Either Dershowitz thinks that the Watergate break-in and subsequent coverup were not illegal or impeachable because, after all, the point was to secure the president's election," Bowman told Insider. "Or perhaps he has decided that Trump should be king. Either way, not a great argument."
The House of Representatives impeached Trump last month for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Both charges related to his efforts to coerce Ukraine into launching politically motivated investigations targeting former Vice President Joe Biden, a 2020 Democratic frontrunner, his son Hunter, and the Democratic Party as a whole.
While doing so, the president withheld $391 million in vital military aid to Ukraine, as well as a White House meeting that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky desperately sought and still hasn't gotten.
The president lawyers are arguing that if the president ordered his election opponent arrested that would be fine because he's pursuing the national interest in order to get re-elected.
- Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) January 29, 2020Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz: "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." https://t.co/jKErQcS1Iy pic.twitter.com/zo4rL6Zbla
- ABC News (@ABC) January 29, 2020