Alan Dershowitz to Newsmax: Alternate Electors a 'Way to Challenge'

While Michigan has moved to charge 16 alleged alternate electors and the Justice Department is on the verge of a potential indictment of former President Donald Trump, legal expert Alan Dershowitz on Newsmax unwound some of the DOJ's potential hurdles.

"There will definitely be an indictment, and it will relate around the events of Jan. 6, for which Trump was already impeached and acquitted, and we have to wait and see what it contains," Dershowitz said Thursday on "American Agenda." "If it's about the speech, obviously, that's constitutionally protected under the First Amendment.

"If it's about electors, there are cases that say that the way to challenge an election is to put forth a separate slate of electors."

Dershowitz pointed to a Hawaii case in 1960, which goes back to the presidential election of 1876 in which Democrat Samuel Tilden faced former GOP President Rutherford Hayes.

"I don't think that would be an appropriate basis for criminal prosecution, but we have to wait and see," Dershowitz said. "They may have smoking guns."

If special counsel Jack Smith brings an indictment in Washington, D.C., Trump's lawyers would immediately move to have it reassigned to northern Virginia, according to Trump.

"The first thing is lawyers will do will be to move for a change of venue, Northern Virginia, which is just next door, where there's a more balanced jury pool than in Washington, D.C.," Dershowitz said. "Over 90% of the jury pool probably will have voted against Trump, so there'll be a motion to change the venue.

"And that motion should succeed, because he's entitled to a jury of his peers in a jury of his peers doesn't include 90% of people who voted against him."

It is "not the prosecution's fault" if serious, legitimate crimes were committed, according to Dershowitz, but the fact there could be four indictments against Trump before the 2024 presidential election could be depriving Americans of their right to choose whether Trump should be the next president.

"I have a constitutional right to do what I've done twice: That is to vote against Donald Trump on the merits," Dershowitz said. "I intend to exercise that constitutional right, and I don't want prosecutors to take that away from me and the millions of other people who want to vote either for or against Donald Trump.

"The vote should be up to the people, the citizens, not up to a bunch of bureaucrats who decide that he should be indicted on phony charges.

"The New York indictment, for example, is totally phony. It should have resulted in discipline against the prosecutor who brought it. The Florida indictment seems sounder, and we'll see what the D.C. indictment looks like."

Civil libertarians would be more concerned about the prosecutorial abuse, if they were just anti-Trump operatives seeking to abuse it for political goals themselves, Dershowitz said.

"Every civil libertarian has been furious at Congress from passing the RICO laws and at prosecutors for using conspiracy laws, but, suddenly, civil libertarians on the left are asleep," Dershowitz said. "And they said, Oh, let's do it. Let's expand the RICO laws, let's expand the espionage laws, let's expand the conspiracy laws — as long as it's Donald Trump, civil liberties don't apply.

"I'm a consistent civil libertarian. I don't think RICO law should be applied to political context. It was designed to get the mafia — not to get the Republican Party.

"And if it's used, it will be misused."

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