Former President Donald Trump's call for an independent overseer for the documents taken from his Mar-a-Lago estate must be granted, as the Department of Justice "absolutely" can't be trusted to be unbiased while handling the documents and determining which ones fall under attorney-client protections, Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz tells Newsmax.
"Let me give you a possible hypothetical," Dershowitz, a network analyst, said on Newsmax's "National Report." "Let's assume that this so-called taint team, which are just prosecutors who have lunch every day with the other prosecutors who were trying the case, let's assume the tainting prosecutors find a lawyer-client privileged email that has a smoking gun or juicy anti-Trump material in it. Would any American trust that never to be made public?"
Dershowitz added that no prosecutor should ever see anything that is protected by lawyer-client privilege, which should, "of course, go to a special master."
Even then, there are questions of whether communications could be released, said Dershowitz.
"When I talked to a client, the understanding was that nothing would be made public," he said. "I go to my grave with his secrets. I could make a billion dollars today, writing books disclosing all the secrets my clients have told me over the years. I cannot and will not do that."
But as for the DOJ's prosecutors, they should not "look through lawyer-client privileged information, decide what's privileged and then promise us that they won't reveal it with a wink and a nod to the next prosecutor at lunch. It's absurd.
"I've been railing against these taint teams for 50 years. There's no justification for it, and the American public shouldn't stand for it."
The judge handling Trump's request has indicated she'll grant it, but Dershowitz asked why it wasn't up to the former president's team to handle the demands.
"Where's the American Civil Liberties Union?" he said. "Where's the American Bar Association? They should all be seeking an independent master instead of letting the Justice Department do this."
But if the documents were Hillary Clinton's emails, the Bar Association and university professors would be saying that the DOJ could not look at the documents, Dershowitz said.
Meanwhile, Dershowitz has said that the affidavit used in the warrant to search Trump's house should have enough documentation to indict Trump, as that's easy to do, but he does not think the former president should be prosecuted.
"The evidence doesn't meet the two tests that should be met for a future potential candidate for president against the incumbent president," said Dershowitz. "Why is this case different from the Hillary Clinton case where she was running for president and was not indicted for her mishandling of classified information?"
He added that he doesn't think Trump should be indicted, even if it is the "easiest thing in the world" to charge someone.
"If it were to get to that point, I guarantee you, the Justice Department will bring an indictment in Washington, D.C., where 90% of the jury pool voted against Donald Trump," said Dershowitz. "I voted against Donald Trump. I'm looking for an opportunity to vote against him for the third time, and I don't want to be denied that opportunity by some attorney general bureaucrat that tries to indict the opponent of the incumbent president. That's what happens in banana republics."
Dershowitz also discussed the news that Timothy Thibault, the FBI assistant special agent in charge had either been fired or quit the agency. Thibault, key in handling the Hunter Biden investigation, had come to the attention of congressional Republicans through internal leaks about his conduct and his social media posts.
"I think the FBI took the right step by firing this guy if he had allowed himself to engage in political bias, either in the handling of the Hunter Biden or Donald Trump matter," he said. "The FBI must be absolutely above reproach."
However, Dershowitz said he doesn't think the FBI has a bias against either Democrats or Republicans, but against Trump himself.
"I think it's very individual, but it has no place in the FBI or the Justice Department," he said.
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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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