Former President Donald Trump categorically rejected to Newsmax any talk he wants to be handcuffed and perp walked, but constitutional law and ethics expert Alan Dershowitz said he might be missing out on a business and political opportunity.
"President Trump called me [Friday] to tell me that he was going to endorse my book, which I appreciated very much, and I said, 'I have a suggestion: Why don't you invest in t-shirt companies that will make your mug shot, if you have a mug shot?" Dershowitz told Saturday's "America Right Now." "The best-selling t-shirt in the country.
"You all remember when Frank Sinatra had a mug shot. That became a poster in every college kid's dorm room and became a famous t-shirt.
"If there is a mug shot of Donald Trump or a perp walk shot of Donald Trump that will become his campaign poster, and that will be on t-shirts, thousands and thousands of t-shirts, around America."
Trump explicitly told Newsmax's "Rob Schmitt Tonight" on Friday he has no desire to be arrested, handcuffed, and perp walked, telling host Rob Schmitt, "no, none of that's true."
But Dershowitz is predicting efforts to weaponize the justice system against the Democrats' chief political rival are going to "backfire," even if Trump does not want to use his potential arrest to rile up his voting base.
"I don't know whether it will help him or hurt him," Dershowitz continued Saturday to host Lidia Curanaj. "I don't blame him for saying he doesn't want that to happen to him. Nobody wants to be arrested and perp walked."
Dershowitz read Trump's endorsement of "Get Trump: The Threat to Civil Liberties, Due Process, and Our Constitutional Rule of Law" to Curanaj on Saturday.
"By the way, that book is now an Amazon bestseller, and the best way of sending a message to this District Attorney [Alvin] Bragg is to keep my book a bestseller," Dershowitz continued. "Buy my book. My book is a protest against what Bragg is doing, and it sends him a message.
"It says, 'You're accountable. History will hold you accountable. Books are being written about you. Are you going to want to look your children and grandchildren in the face and say, 'I was part of this legal McCarthyism that destroyed the law, that allowed the targeting of individuals, that adopted a banana republic, Stalin-esque approach to "show me the man and I'll find you the crime."'
"No, that's not the American way."
Dershowitz noted the title of the book was inspired by New York Attorney General Letitia James' seeking to find a crime to charge the Democrats' chief political rival with.
"She campaigned on the promise, 'I will get Trump'; 'get Trump' was her campaign slogan," Dershowitz said.
"I had somebody wrote me a letter recently saying, 'I was planning to vote for [Ron] DeSantis, but now I'm going vote for Trump as a protest against Bragg,'" he added. "So this could backfire."
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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