Alan Dershowitz, Harvard law professor emeritus, told Newsmax on Monday that President Donald Trump will ultimately have to settle the dispute in the executive branch spurred by Elon Musk's latest memo to the federal workforce.
Trump on Monday backed Musk's memo demanding that federal employees list 5 recent accomplishments or risk getting fired, despite the FBI and Director of National Intelligence heads telling their employees not to respond. Others were told that replying was voluntary.
"The president ultimately has to decide this. He's the head of the executive branch," Dershowitz said on "The Record With Greta Van Susteren." "And if he has a conflict between Elon Musk, who is not technically employed by the government, and the head of the FBI, who obviously is technically employed by the government, the head of the executive has to make the decision."
Dershowitz added, "There's only one executive and that's the president. And ultimately the buck stops there and he has to make the decision."
However, Dershowitz said he doesn't see "any constitutional issues that are being raised."
"And frankly, I don't see any problem about asking employees to list the 5 things they did this weekend. I just sat down and I listed my 28 things I did this past week, and it made me feel good," he said.
At the end of the day, Dershowitz said, this is an attempt to get the executive branch under control.
"This is a show of power; this is muscle flexing. And clearly it can't be enforced. This is a work in progress and it's an attempt to try to determine what the executive branch is all about," he told Van Susteren.
"Let's remember at the time of the Constitution, the executive branch was one person, the president, not even the vice president, just the president. And then after the New Deal, it became the largest unit anywhere in the world of anything, the bureaucracy," Dershowitz said. "And they're part of the executive, and we haven't yet figured out how to tame that and bring it under control. And this is an attempt to try to do that."
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