Harvard Law professor emeritus and civil libertarian Alan Dershowitz said Sunday that “of course” there is enough evidence for House Republicans to start an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden for bribery.
Dershowitz appeared on Breitbart News Sunday on SiriusXM Patriot 125 to discuss the recent indictment of former President Donald Trump by Special Counsel Jack Smith for allegedly mishandling sensitive documents.
Host Joel Pollak asked Dershowitz about the timing of the indictment, which was delivered on the day that the FBI was compelled to give Congress a document reportedly implicating then-Vice President Biden in bribery.
That information, alleging Biden’s involvement in a $5 million bribery scheme tied to Ukrainian business interests, came after revelations of indirect payments from a Chinese company to members of the Biden family.
“Could the Republican-led House investigate Joe Biden for bribery, which is one of the explicitly impeachable offenses in the Constitution, based on the evidence they’ve seen so far?” Pollak asked Dershowitz.
“Of course,” Dershowitz replied. “And there is enough to investigate. There’s a big gulf between ‘enough to investigate’ [and] enough to establish probable cause, enough to indict — we’re not even close to [the latter], but enough to investigate? Of course. I mean, the FBI statement by the so-called reliable informant, if they believe it to be true, gives them enough to investigate.
US President Joe Biden, with son Hunter Biden, arrives at Hancock Field Air National Guard Base in Syracuse, New York, on February 4, 2023. (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP) (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)
“And of course the House, when it was controlled by Democrats, went very, very far in investigating Donald Trump, and as I said at the time, there’ll be tit-for-tat when the Republicans get control of the House, they’ll do the same thing,” he continued.
“I’d prefer to see mutual disarmament, but you can’t have unilateral disarmament. If one side weaponizes the impeachment and the criminal justice system, you can expect the other side will do as well.”
In this image from video, Alan Dershowitz, an attorney for President Donald Trump, speaks during the impeachment trial against Trump in the Senate at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Monday, Jan. 27, 2020. (Senate Television via AP)
Dershowitz also said that the indictment of Trump, while serious, falls short of the “Richard Nixon standard,” as well as the “Hillary Clinton standard” set by the Department of Justice when it chose not to investigate the leading Democratic Party candidate for president despite evidence that she destroyed classified information.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Sunday, Dershowitz notes:
Even with the recorded statements [by Trump], this case isn’t nearly as strong as the one that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974. Nixon was almost certainly guilty of destroying evidence, bribing witnesses and other acts of obstruction. Many of the charges in this case are matters of degree. Nor have prosecutors any evidence that Mr. Trump’s actions damaged national security more than those of Mr. Biden, Mr. Pence and Mrs. Clinton did.
Dershowitz represented Trump in his second impeachment trial, but voted against the former preisdent — twice.
Dershowitz is also the author of the book Get Trump: The Threat to Civil Liberties, Due Process, and Our Constitutional Rule of Law.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
