On Saturday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz stated that special counsels are generally like Captain Ahab hunting the white whale and it isn’t likely that special counsel Robert Mueller will want to come away with nothing. He also argued that while it is legitimate to look into President Trump’s finances to see if he has any major debts to Russian oligarchs, a general search into his finances to look for a crime is inappropriate.
Dershowitz said that the Trump administration’s criticism of members of the special counsel’s team donating to Democrats is “playing the refs.” He added, “Bill Clinton did the same thing when Ken Starr was appointed. They did very aggressive investigations of Ken Starr and his assistants to show how much they had given to Republican causes, how active they were among Republicans. Did it have an impact? I don’t know. But lawyers do that all the time.”
Dershowitz further stated that President Trump’s statement that looking into his finances would be a “red line” is “a clue.” He compared this to someone telling police officers searching their house not to look in a drawer.
He continued, “Now, you know, the problem with special counsel, I am not supportive of the appointment of a special counsel in general, is that it’s Captain Ahab and the white whale in ‘Moby Dick.’ You give a guy one goal. Prosecutors generally have years to decide who to prosecute, what to prosecute. You give a prosecutor one goal and give them a lot of money. You have them appoint a lot of lawyers. It’s unlikely he’s going to want to come away with nothing. … They’re determined to get that white whale, and no matter what crime they find, if they don’t find the original crime, they’ll try to find another crime. They’re going to try to find a link to crimes.”
Dershowitz concluded that it is legitimate to look and see if there are major debts to Russian oligarchs, but “a general search into his financial records to look for a crime is not right. It’s the old Lavrenty Beria, Joseph Stalin, where, Lavrenty Beria, the head of the KGB says to Stalin, ‘Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.’ We don’t want America ever to become a country where prosecutors are determined to find something on somebody and they will search every possible area until they come up with some crime against that person or people close to him.”
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