Politics

Dershowitz’s Friends And Family Are Not Happy He’s Defending Trump

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Jack Crowe Political Reporter
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Constitutional law scholar Alan Dershowitz has faced consequences in his personal life for his public repudiation of the obstruction of justice theorizing surrounding President Donald Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey.

Dershowitz, a former Democratic darling and Harvard law professor, has appeared on TV regularly throughout Trump’s inaugural year to reiterate his strongly-held opinion that charging Trump with obstruction would trigger a constitutional crisis and Trump was acting well in within his authority when he fired Comey.

As a result, he says his friends and family have lost respect for him.

“My really, really close friends say, ‘You’re 100 percent right in your analysis, but can’t you just shut the f–k up and not talk at all,'” he told Politico on Tuesday. “They tell me, ‘This is a time for selective silence.’ My nephew thinks I’m helping keep in office one of the greatest dangers in American history. I tell him I’m just standing up for principle. He tells me that I don’t have to stand up so loud.”

The aging scholar says his numerous Fox News appearances have also resulted in significant hate mail in which viewers suggest his defense of Trump derives from his Jewish faith and attendant allegiance to Israel or some career ambition.

“I got emails saying, ‘You’re doing this because of Jerusalem,’ ‘you’re doing it because you’re being paid a lot of money,’ ‘you want to be Trump’s lawyer,’ ‘you want to be on the Supreme Court.'”

Sadly, Dershowitz says his ailing reputation in liberal circles has harmed his family more than himself.

“I was a source of pride to my kids, my grandkids,” he said. “Now it’s ‘Oy, he’s related to Alan Dershowitz.’ That hurts me a little bit.”

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