Democrats are ready to eliminate civil liberties if it means convicting President Donald Trump of a crime, Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz said Saturday.
"The way they go after our rights is to first go after political enemies, establish precedence on the basis of the political enemies," Dershowitz told Fox News' "Fox and Friends. "Then that precedent lies around like a loaded gun and is used against anybody."
Dershowitz referred to the 1966 movie "A Man for All Seasons," when the protagonist, Sir Thomas More, said he would give the devil the right of the law, but his opponent replied "'if you knock down all the laws to get the devil, the next thing that will happen is the devil will use that to come after you.'"
"Now, Democrats and left wingers obviously think President Trump is the devil, and they are prepared to eliminate civil liberties," Dershowitz said.
He pointed to the recent raids on the offices and home of Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, noting that the Americans Civil Liberties Union is praising the act and "parading the fact that the FBI gets to read potentially lawyer client information, because they want to get Trump."
Dershowitz added that there are many civil libertarians in the ACLU that "don't care about civil liberties."
"All they care about is left wing, hard-left politics," he said. "They use civil liberties as an excuse and as a justification. This is happening all over the country. When I was a kid it was the McCarthyites on the right trying to stop free speech on campus. Today it's the left."
Dershowitz noted that there were protests against him recently at the University of Illinois, where he was speaking, because he supports Israel.
"Everybody is turning everything around now, and there is so much hypocrisy, and the ultimate victim is both truth and civil liberties," he said.
Dershowitz, though, stressed that he's not only critical about Democrats on the matter.
"I'm critical of Republicans who are yelling about Hillary Clinton, 'lock her up,' and trying to expand the criminal law to get her," he said. "When they tried to impeach Bill Clinton that was a mistake. It's always a mistake to expand the criminal law."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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