Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz told Fox’s America’s Newsroom that President Trump doesn’t need to fire special counsel Robert Mueller, as the former FBI Director is conducting a “sloppy investigation” and was “really foolish” for not obtaining warrants for Trump transition team emails.
Alan Dershowitz, Robert Mueller (Fox News)
Dershowitz says Trump “has Mueller in a good position now,” adding “a lot of the American public think he [Mueller] is biased against Trump, and that may lead him, because he cares so much about his reputation, to lean over backwards in favor of Trump. So if I were Trump, I wouldn’t try to fire him. I would continue to keep pressure on and raise issues about the emails, etc. Mueller’s playing into his hands.” Dershowitz then said Mueller was “really foolish in not seeking warrants.”
“Why not seek the warrant? Getting warrants is like getting candy at Christmas. It’s very easy to get. And not getting a warrant gives the defense an opportunity to challenge it in court”
Trump transition attorney Kory Langhofer wrote a letter on Saturday to two congressional committees investigating the election with claims that Mueller’s team had improperly obtained tens of thousands of emails from the Trump Transition Team from the General Services Administration – the government agency responsible for hosting and maintaining the transition team’s “ptt.gov” email system.
The trove of documents, which includes sensitive emails to and from Trump son-in-law and top advisor Jared Kushner, comprise 12 email accounts – one of which reportedly contains around 7,000 emails. Mueller’s team has reportedly been using the emails as the basis for witness interviews, sources told Axios.
Mueller’s office responded Sunday, denying any wrongdoing. In a statement to The Hill, a spokesman for the special counsel’s office said When we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owners consent or appropriate criminal process.”
Dershowitz also pointed to bias on Mueller’s team, noting that the special counsel investigation has a credibility problem after FBI counterintelligence investigator Peter Strzok was removed from his team for sending anti-Trump text messages to his FBI-Attorney mistress Lisa Page while the two agents were working closely on the Hillary Clinton email investigation. Strzok infamously downgraded the FBI’s assessment of Clinton’s mishandling of classified information from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless,” a move which effectively decriminalized Clinton’s behavior.
“When you’re going after the president, you have to be Caesar’s wife, you have to be above reproach. You can’t give the other side any ammunition, and he has given the other side plenty of ammunition,” Dershowitz said.
