Perspectives; Thoughts; Comments; Opinions; Discussions

Posts tagged ‘professor Alan Dershowitz’

Alan Dershowitz explains why judge may quickly toss out Trump indictment: ‘Foolish, foolish decision’


By: CHRIS ENLOE | March 31, 2023

Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/dershowitz-trump-case-tossed-statute-of-limitations/

Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Legal scholar Alan Dershowitz explained why he believes the indictment against former President Donald Trump will be quickly tossed from court. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg confirmed on Thursday that a grand jury has indicted Trump over allegations related to an alleged hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels. The indictment, however, remains under seal, and the exact charges will not be publicized until Trump is arraigned, which is expected to take place next week.

Reacting to the unprecedented news, the Harvard Law School emeritus professor predicted a judge will toss the case on statute of limitations grounds.

“I think the most important thing is they indicted him when he was out of New York, and that means they could have indicted him within the statute of limitations when he was out of New York. The statute of limitations is way expired,” Dershowitz explained on Newsmax. “They claimed they couldn’t have indicted him because he was outside of New York, but now they’ve indicted him when he’s not in New York.”

Dershowitz added that Bragg made a “foolish, foolish decision, which will cause the case to be thrown out, I think, on statute of limitations grounds.”

A scholar of American criminal law, Dershowitz predicted Trump’s attorneys will file an immediate motion to dismiss the case based on statute of limitations grounds.

Bragg reportedly investigated Trump for falsifying business records over allegations that money he claimed went to Michael Cohen for legal services actually went to Daniels. In New York, the crime of falsifying business records is generally a misdemeanor — for which the statute of limitations is two years — but it can be a Class E felony if the crime occurred “to conceal another crime.” The statute of limitations in that case is five years. It is not yet known what second crime prosecutors allege Trump committed to elevate the charge to a felony, though it is believed that prosecutors will argue the hush-money payment constituted a violation of campaign finance laws.

At the center of the statute of limitations concern is whether they were triggered in 2017 — when the payments to Cohen were allegedly made — or in 2018 on the basis of bookkeeping implications.

As former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy explained:

Assuming the statute of limitations was thus triggered in 2018, the five-year period would lapse sometime this year. That, at least in part, explains the frenetic investigative activity that has gone on the last few weeks: If the state doesn’t indict soon, the case would be time-barred. Or . . . it could be time-barred already.

The indictment came despite the Justice Department declining to prosecute it. The Federal Election Commission also declined the case.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Alan Dershowitz: Rittenhouse ‘should be acquitted,’ then sue liberal media outlets for their ‘deliberate and willful lies’; ‘It’s the New Yorker and CNN that are the vigilantes’


Reported by PHIL SHIVER | November 16, 2021

Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/dershowitz-rittenhouse-should-be-acquitted-sue-liberal-media/

Former Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz blasted liberal media outlets such as CNN and the New Yorker over the weekend for their biased and erroneous reporting on the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. The scholar said the Illinois teenager charged with killing two men and wounding another during Black Lives Matter riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last summer “should be acquitted” and then should go on the offensive against the media outlets that have branded him a white supremacist vigilante before the conclusion of his trial.

“If I were a juror, I would vote that there was reasonable doubt [and] that he did act in self-defense,” Dershowitz told Newsmax on Saturday.

“Then he’ll bring lawsuits, and that’s the way to answer … vigilante justice is what CNN is doing, not what a 17-year-old kid under pressure may have done right or wrong. It’s CNN who is involved in vigilante justice. It’s the New Yorker that’s guilty of vigilante justice,” he added.

Dershowitz compared Rittenhouse’s case to former Kentucky high school student Nicholas Sandmann, who became the target of left-wing media attacks following an encounter with a Native American activist in Washington, D.C. Sandmann later sued CNN and the Washington Post. Both the network and the paper ended up settling.

“The idea is to make the media accountable for deliberate and willful lies,” Dershowitz explained.

He added in a Sunday conversation with Breitbart’s Joel Pollak that “CNN and some of the other TV stations” are the “ones who want to put not the thumb, but the elbow on the scale of justice.”

“They want to influence the outcome of this case,” he argued. “And there are others who are threatening violence if there is anything but convictions in this case, as they threatened violence in previous cases and will in subsequent cases unless something is done about it. It’s the New Yorker and CNN that are the vigilantes. They’re the ones who are trying to influence justice without regard to evidence or the law.”

Rittenhouse is currently facing multiple felony murder charges — including first-degree intentional homicide and first-degree reckless homicide — for fatally shooting Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and wounding Gage Grosskreutz, 28.

Rittenhouse’s defense team has maintained that their client was in Kenosha on Aug. 25, 2020, to protect local businesses and provide medical aid during the uprising and that he was only acting in self-defense when he fired the shots.

Videos of the incidents seen by the public appear to show Rittenhouse being chased and physically threatened before firing his gun. The prosecution, however, argued that the defendant provoked the attacks by bringing an AR-15 to the protests.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the jury was still deliberating over the verdict.

Category:

Law

Tagged with:

Tag Cloud