It was standing room only at the Katharine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven Wednesday night when Alan Dershowitz took the stage for a two-hour event that included a spirited defense of his most recent public defense of President Trump.
“Look, I was born provocative,” said the noted constitutional scholar, Harvard Law School professor and longtime Chilmark summer resident.
The event was sponsored by the Vineyard Haven Public Library and moderated by Judy Crawford.
It came during a summer when Mr. Dershowitz has earned more than a few headlines following his June 27 opinion column in The Hill, a Washington, D.C., newspaper about Congress, where he defended the president’s civil liberties. What attracted the media attention however was not the legal defense of the president but rather Mr. Dershowitz’s claim that he was being shunned by his Vineyard summer friends for his views.
On Wednesday a charming, funny and provocative Mr. Dershowitz struck a conciliatory tone, admitting that the latest donnybrook in the court of public opinion has had an effect like no other episode in his long and sometimes contentious career.
“I’m trying to put behind me, obviously, any of these personal issues, I’m dealing with now,” he said.
“A number of the people who objected are now starting to talk to me, they want to have discourse and dialogue. Maybe I didn’t realize enough, how emotionally people are invested in opposing Trump. I was talking to their minds and I probably wasn’t sufficiently attuned to their heart, their soul, their emotion. I’ve lived a contentious life, all of my life, and this is the first time that this kind of contentious approach has had such a profound impact on friendships and personal relationships.”
He also offered harsh criticism of President Trump on many of his domestic and foreign policy actions, but did not waver in his opposition to the appointment of a special prosecutor, or his contention that there is no evidence Mr. Trump has committed any violation of law that rises to an impeachable offense.
“I believe they are trying to prosecute him, for acts that are protected by the constitution,” he told the audience. “As a civil libertarian, as a criminal defense attorney, I’m never going to seek the expansion of criminal law. It’s very dangerous to have accordion-like criminal laws, that can be expanded and contracted depending on who the target is.”
Mr. Dershowitz said he does not advise President Trump on the investigation into whether his campaign colluded with Russian intelligence agencies in trying to influence the 2016 presidential election. He said he is not the president’s lawyer, and made it clear to the administration that he would turn down any such request.
“It’s for me a great challenge to make constitutional arguments that have the effect of helping somebody with whom I so strongly disagree,” Mr. Dershowitz said. “I do not want to be loyal to the president, I want to be loyal to the constitution. I’ve never advised him on how to deal with the Mueller investigation, except in public.
“When I’m on television I say three things. Don’t fire, don’t pardon, and don’t testify, if you can avoid it.”
Following the session, Mr. Dershowitz signed copies of his latest book The Case Against Impeaching Trump. He said proceeds from the evening’s sale of books would be donated to Island charities.
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