As last week careened into Labor Day weekend, Alan Dershowitz received some bad news from the Eleventh Circuit, who affirmed the lower court’s ruling and kicked Dershowitz’s defamation claim against CNN to the curb. This is the saddest Dershowiz has been since the Martha’s Vineyard pierogi stand refused to sell him a potato dumpling.
Did you know, that since PierogiGate, Martha’s Vineyard turned out to wait in line for pierogies to support Dershowitz’s vendor nemesis? USA! USA!
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Back to the topic at hand. Dershowitz had sued CNN in the wake of his role advocating for Donald Trump’s right to threaten cutting off President Zelenskyy if the Ukrainian leader didn’t scratch Trump’s increasingly bloated back in building a corruption case against Joe Biden over Hunter Biden’s job or something something. The conspiracy theory was always stupid and the geopolitical risk in withholding Ukrainian aid was always very real — tragically proven right soon after — that Congress impeached Trump for trying to use U.S. foreign policy to fuel his fundraising. Trump survived the trial, mostly because Democrats did not have 67 seats in the chamber, but Dershowitz helped too.
In the course of his effort to get Trump off the hook, Dershowitz made the claim that presidents can engage in foreign policy quid pro quo, even if the president is negotiating for his personal — and not the country’s — gain, so long as the president sees his personal fortunes as key to the national interest. Would that extend to an excuse as flimsy and self-serving as reelection? Dershowitz said… quite possibly!
[A] complex middle case is: I want to be elected. I think I am a great President. I think I am the greatest President there ever was, and if I am not elected, the national interest will suffer greatly. That cannot be [an impeachable offense].
If the president does it, it isn’t illegal as the saying goes.
The mainstream media jumped on Dershowitz indulging in the insane theory that the law contemplates presidents engaging in foreign policy for personal gain. Little did they know at the time that we would soon have the Supreme Court endorsing presidents deploying SEAL Team 6 to murder political opponents based on a president’s subjective faith in their own election. Everyone dragged Dershowitz for his suggestion that presidents can have a little corruption as a treat.
But Dershowitz complained that this straightforward interpretation of his fairly explicit remarks was incorrect. For their part, CNN brought Dershowitz on to explain. So he sued CNN for $300 million. The Eleventh Circuit responded with “LOL, no.”