Former President Donald Trump is "being used as the poster child for denying constitutional rights," while the legal system is being weaponized to keep him from returning to the White House, Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said on Newsmax on Tuesday.
"What we're seeing here is the weaponization of the legal system against political opponents," Dershowitz said on "Newsline" about the multiple indictments and rulings Trump is fighting, including the multimillion-dollar judgment in his New York civil fraud case.
"If Donald Trump was not running for president, none of this would be happening," he added. "This is clearly an attempt to prevent him from being president."
The upcoming presidential election comes at a time when the American public must be able to accept the outcome, said Dershowitz.
"If he loses fair and square, that's fine," he said. "But if he loses with the thumb or even the elbow of the legal system on the scale, the American public is simply not going to accept the legitimacy of this election."
Meanwhile, Dershowitz said the $464 million judgment against Trump in the New York civil fraud case "violates the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits excessive fines," and denies him due process.
"We live today in unconstitutional land, largely because of the get Trump attitude," said Dershowitz. "If this was against a Democrat or a civil libertarian or somebody popular on the left. They'd be outraged about this. I'm equally outraged whether it's somebody I support or somebody I don't support."
Meanwhile, Dershowitz said he thinks Trump can only get a fair trial in Florida, given the bias against him in liberal states.
"[All of these trials] shouldn't be conducted because there's no basis I believe, in law, in fact for any of them," he said. "They should be conducted in jurisdictions that are evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, not in jurisdictions like the District of Columbia, where 95% of the jurors probably hate Trump with a passion and would convict him even if he were not guilty."
Dershowitz also Tuesday spoke out against the imprisonment of former Trump White House official Peter Navarro, who is reporting Tuesday to serve a four-month sentence for misdemeanor charges of failing to cooperate with the congressional investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The Supreme Court refused Monday to stay the sentence for Navarro, 76, while he appeals the case, and Dershowitz said that is "outrageous."
"You have an old man who is facing a very controversial conviction, which likely will be considered seriously on appeal, maybe even reversed," said Dershowitz. "The man is not a flight risk. He's not a dangerous … he should be allowed to stay out on appeal."
Should Navarro win his appeal, he'll still likely serve out the full sentence, said Dershowitz.
"Where does he go to get those four months back?" Dershowitz said. "Four months are pretty valuable when you're in your middle 70s. This is an outrageous injustice and it shouldn't be tolerated. I'm shocked that the Supreme Court accepted this. It's just simply wrong."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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