New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, has exposed herself as a biased and unfit prosecutor by promising to go after former President Donald Trump, and she should be investigated, disciplined and potentially disbarred, legal expert Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax.
''The role of the prosecutor is not to get people, it's to do justice,'' Dershowitz said on Tuesday's ''Spicer & Co.'' ''She is not in the justice business. She is in the political-gotcha business.
''She is so undignified,'' he added. ''She brings the law into contempt and people, when they see her make statements like that, say, 'this is not the law; this is just political weaponization.'
''And that's not what the district attorney or an attorney general should be doing.''
Dershowitz pointed to the lawsuit brought forward by Trump's lawyers against James and her past comments during her campaign for attorney general, when she vowed to go after Trump — and now she has.
''Well, this isn't justice. This is, this is mob rule,'' Dershowitz said. ''This is what happens in Cuba. This is what happens in China. This is not what should happen in the United States — where people run for office, go on television, get laughs: 'I love you, I love you because we're going to get Trump; we're going to get Trump.'
''That's not due process.
''You cannot allow the criminal justice system to become weaponized for political purposes,'' Dershowitz continued. ''And I'll tell you, Letitia James is, for me, the paradigm: the most extreme case of obvious bias by a prosecutor.
''She ought to be investigated by the bar association, and she ought to be seriously disciplined, if not disbarred. No lawyer should be doing and saying what she is saying about a potential defendant in either a civil or criminal case.''
Dershowitz said the Trump case against James has merit because she acknowledged running for attorney general on the promise of going after Trump.
''Does it have merit? The answer is clearly yes,'' Dershowitz said. ''This is one of the worst abuses — I have seen 55 years of practicing — of elected prosecutors. You know, we're the only country in the Western world, the only country in the history of the Western world that ever elected prosecutors.
''And when you have a prosecutor who ran — ran! — on the platform, 'I'm going to be a pain in the rear end; he's going to know my name; I'm going to get him' — that's not the way prosecution ought to work.
''This is a disgrace to the legal system. She ought to be disciplined and disbarred for using her office to settle political scores and to get herself reelected.''
Still, Dershowitz acknowledged that it will come down to a court ruling in the liberal state of New York, even if ''this is a situation where what she is doing is clearly unethical, unprofessional, and in violation of the obligation of prosecutors.''
''Will the courts have the courage to stand up to a prosecutor and say, enough is enough? I don't know,'' Dershowitz said. ''The answer to that depends on the judge, depends on the quality of the legal brief, but the case is an extremely strong one.''
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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