Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax that the effort to keep former President Donald Trump off the 2024 ballot is "the most serious frontal attack on democracy" for quite some time.
Joining "The Record with Greta Van Susteren" on Friday, the Harvard Law professor emeritus blamed alums from his alma mater for concocting a novel interpretation of the United States Constitution's "insurrection clause."
Dershowitz called out Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., his former student, and Harvard Emeritus Professor Laurence Tribe, his longtime colleague, as leading the effort to hinder Trump's chances.
"They are deliberately, willfully misreading the 14th Amendment," Dershowitz stressed. "The 14th Amendment provides in Section 5 that Congress — not the states — Congress can enforce this provision.
"Now remember who wrote the 14th Amendment — radical Republican reconstructionists who didn't trust the states. They would never have left the decision [of] who can run for president to South Carolina, Virginia, Mississippi, and Alabama."
The legal argument, which the Colorado Supreme Court and Maine's secretary of state have used to argue Trump should be left off, "is the most absurd reading of a constitutional provision I have ever seen."
"If Professor Tribe were in my class, and I was teaching constitutional law, with grade inflation, I'd give him a D- for his analysis," Dershowitz stated.
The Supreme Court is likely gearing up to hear a case on the use of the "insurrection clause," the scope of which liberal and conservative legal scholars have debated, due to the two states' decisions.
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Luca Cacciatore ✉
Luca Cacciatore, a Newsmax general assignment writer, is based in Arlington, Virginia, reporting on news and politics.
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