Liberal attorney Alan Dershowitz on Saturday said that while President Trump has the legal authority to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the president has better options.
Rosenstein has come under fire of late after a bombshell New York Times report alleged he suggested wearing a wire to record President Trump in an effort to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove him from office, a report which he strongly denied Friday night.
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“He certainly has the legal authority to fire him, the constitutional authority,” Dershowitz said in a Saturday morning interview with CNN host Michael Smerconish. “No president has to tolerate in his midst somebody who may have tried to pull off a palace coup, but we ought to have hearings on this. Put him under oath, put the other people who were in the room under oath.”
Calling the controversy “Kavanaugh redux,” Dershowitz insisted that we need to “have facts.”
The Harvard professor emeritus told Smerconish that President Trump’s attorneys could motion to “recuse Rosenstein from any involvement in any case involving the president, because he has a conflict of interest,” but the president should not “create a problem” for himself by firing him.
“Why create a problem for yourself by firing?” asked Dershowitz. “Right now Rosenstein’s on the defensive. You’re on the offensive. People are actually for the first time looking a little bit maybe sympathetic toward your claim that the investigation is not a completely objective one. I think yesterday was the best day for President Trump, and the day before. I think this Rosenstein revelation certainly plays into the hands of the Giuliani strategy that is that this is to be tried in the court of public opinion looking to a possible impeachment.”