Alan Dershowitz said Saturday that he is not a defender of President Donald Trump, but "I'm a supporter of civil liberties" — and he likened attacks on him to being called "a communist supporter in the 1950s."
"I am not a Trump supporter," the Harvard Law School professor emeritus told The New York Times in an interview on Martha's Vineyard. "I'm a supporter of civil liberties.
"Calling me a Trump supporter is like calling me a communist supporter in the 1950s," he said. "I was not a communist supporter.
"I defended the communists’ right to speak and to teach."
He also said the reaction to the perception he is defending Trump is worse than the reaction he got to defending O.J. Simpson in the 1990s against charges he killed his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman.
"Or Claus von Bulow or Leona Helmsley or Michael Milken or Mike Tyson," Dershowitz said. "This is much worse than all that, because in those cases people were critical of me, but they were prepared to discuss it. They were prepared to have a dialogue. Here, the people that I'm objecting to want to stop the dialogue. They don’t want to have the conversation. It will upset people at the dinner party or on the porch. This is like safe spaces in colleges."
Dershowitz, 79, has been under attack for defending President Trump amid special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, penning an op-ed last month in The Hill saying that he was being shunned as a result in various social circles on the island.
"Here, the people that I’m objecting to want to stop the dialogue," Dershowitz told the Times. "They don’t want to have the conversation.
"It will upset people at the dinner party or on the porch," he added. "This is like safe spaces in colleges."
However, despite the fallout, "I’m enjoying this," he said. "It’s a red badge of courage.
"I'm a Hillary Clinton liberal Democrat who’s trying hard to restore Congress to the Democrats, who will help finance Democratic candidates all over the country," Dershowitz said. "I’m a liberal Democrat.
"I haven’t changed one iota in 50 years."
He said his defense of President Trump stemmed from one right: "to be treated fairly."
"Not to have it considered a crime when you fire, when you exercise your Article II powers under the Constitution."
Dershowitz has argued that Trump exercised his constitutional right to fire FBI Director James Comey last year and that no special counsel should have been appointed.
He has endorsed an independent commission for probing the president's campaign activities.
"The passions are so strong that if I do anything that is perceived as helping Donald Trump, I am an evil conspirator," Dershowitz told the Times. "Anything you do to help this man is villainy."
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