Alan Dershowitz offers Trump free legal advice: 'Don't fire, don't pardon, don't tweet, and don't testify'
Retired Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz isn't President Trump's lawyer, but he knows how to pass along advice to Trump: by sharing it on television.
Dershowitz appeared on ABC's This Week Sunday morning, and said he wanted to give Trump some guidance. "Don't fire, don't pardon, don't tweet, and don't testify," he said. If Trump had already listened to this advice, he addded, "he'd be in less trouble than he is today."
Trump has asked his lawyers about potentially pardoning Paul Manafort, his former campaign chairman who was found guilty last week of eight counts of financial crimes, and he is always tweeting, especially about Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. He calls the investigation "a witch hunt," and it's anyone's guess if he'll sit down for an interview with the special counsel.
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Dershowitz said Trump really doesn't need to be too concerned about the Mueller investigation, which is also looking into potential obstruction of justice and collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, but he should keep his eye on federal prosecutors in New York who last week reportedly granted immunity to Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg and Trump friend and CEO of American Media Inc. David Pecker. Prosecutors in Manhattan are said to be investigating the hush money payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels by Michael Cohen, Trump's former personal lawyer, and how this money was reimbursed to Cohen by the Trump Organization.
"I think he has constitutional defenses to the investigation being conducted by Mueller," Dershowitz said. "But there are no constitutional defenses to what the Southern District [of New York] is investigating. So, I think the Southern District is the greatest threat."
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Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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