The Charlie Kirk Show - The Worst Indictment Ever? With Alan Dershowitz

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, today in the Charlie Kirk show, a bad day, but we still act.

00:00:04.000 Alan Dershowitz talks about this ridiculous arraignment, and we have a very interesting conversation I think you'll enjoy.

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00:00:30.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:31.000 Here we go.

00:00:32.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:34.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:00:36.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

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00:00:43.000 I want to thank Charlie.

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00:01:14.000 Yesterday was not a good day.

00:01:16.000 Not only was Trump arraigned, Wisconsin was a blowout, and there goes the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

00:01:21.000 And it decreases our chance to be able to win the White House in 2024.

00:01:25.000 It's not impossible, but we tried to warn people: turning point actions on the ground.

00:01:29.000 We were knocking on doors trying to raise money.

00:01:30.000 The RNC, nowhere to be found.

00:01:32.000 MIA, that's why we tried to do everything we could to get regime change done at the RNC. 1.00

00:01:36.000 They wouldn't be bothered.

00:01:37.000 They were too busy doing their things that they do, which is nothing but pay themselves and take care of their DC consultants.

00:01:43.000 And then Chicago, not as if it was going in a hopeful direction, decided to elect an outright Marxist.

00:01:50.000 Total Marxist is going to become mayor of Chicago.

00:01:53.000 We'll get to these stories, but let's get to the one that is leading, which is the arraignment of Donald Trump.

00:01:59.000 Donald Trump was arraigned yesterday, and we finally got a picture into what Donald Trump has been charged with or not been charged with.

00:02:09.000 And I think the details are important.

00:02:10.000 There are so many ways to criticize and pick apart this indictment.

00:02:14.000 It's hard to believe this thing was ever even brought.

00:02:19.000 Alvin Barr should be disbarred for this immediately.

00:02:23.000 This thing is a joke.

00:02:26.000 It is an insult to the entire American legal system.

00:02:30.000 They arraigned and indicted the entire American legal system yesterday.

00:02:39.000 That's what they did.

00:02:41.000 So basically, the indictment centers on Trump's allegedly falsifying business records to cover up a crime.

00:02:48.000 But what was the crime?

00:02:49.000 What is the crime exactly?

00:02:52.000 So Alvin Bragg was asked, hey, what's the crime?

00:02:56.000 What exactly is the crime here that was committed?

00:03:01.000 Because you don't actually mention the crime in the indictment.

00:03:04.000 So you're indicting a former president for allegedly falsifying business records to cover up a crime.

00:03:10.000 What is the crime?

00:03:12.000 What is he being charged with?

00:03:14.000 And they don't specify.

00:03:15.000 They just say, oh, it's just a crime.

00:03:18.000 Got to figure it out.

00:03:19.000 Play cut 48.

00:03:21.000 And they were done to conceal another crime, but the indictment does not simply say what those crimes were.

00:03:28.000 We are assuming, perhaps, that they might be elected later.

00:03:31.000 I'm wondering if you can specify what laws we're all struggling with.

00:03:36.000 So let me say, as an initial matter, the indictment doesn't specify that because the law does not so require.

00:03:41.000 The first is New York State election law, which makes it a crime to conspire to remote a candidacy by unlawful means.

00:03:50.000 But why weren't there those crimes charged?

00:03:53.000 What can be charged with those crimes?

00:03:56.000 I'm not going to go into our deliberate process on what was brought.

00:03:59.000 The charges that were brought were the ones that were brought.

00:04:01.000 The evidence in the law is the basis for those decisions.

00:04:05.000 Even though he doesn't cite the criminal code that Donald Trump violated, that makes no sense.

00:04:12.000 And so they're saying they falsified business records.

00:04:15.000 There's so much wrong here.

00:04:16.000 And Alan Dershowitz has a fabulous argument he's going to share with us later this hour.

00:04:20.000 He said, wait a second.

00:04:21.000 So if this was an NDA agreement, a hush money payment, it is now the district attorney's argument that you must publicize your hush money payments, that you must now make public the private agreements that you engage in if you also might be running for some political office.

00:04:39.000 And by the way, hush money is not illegal in New York City.

00:04:42.000 It is a standard operating procedure of the corporate and billionaire elite in New York City.

00:04:49.000 You're trying to tell me NBC News is not actively negotiating some hush money payments right now.

00:04:55.000 They specialized in it with Matt Lauer.

00:04:58.000 Every major media organization, bank, investment firm, venture capital in New York City has done this for quite some time.

00:05:07.000 It's not illegal, period.

00:05:09.000 By the way, Michael Cohn is the one that actually wrote the check, and we're supposed to believe that Donald Trump was the one in charge of all what checkbook was being used, as if this is not an accountant issue.

00:05:19.000 This thing is so preposterous.

00:05:20.000 And then Andy McCarthy has a great argument.

00:05:22.000 He said, wait a second, but the alleged crime actually happened after he was a candidate.

00:05:29.000 So how is it that this involved campaign finance if the alleged crime happened after he was running for the presidency?

00:05:38.000 Additionally, in the charging documents, it says that Donald Trump was in New York when he reimbursed Michael Cohen in 2017, but according to Peter Struckstroke Smirk and James Comey's own FBI memos, Donald Trump was not in New York that day in February 2017.

00:05:53.000 So they're indicting him for a crime that they can't specify in a place where they're saying Donald Trump was, even though he was not there.

00:05:59.000 I want to keep reading this.

00:06:01.000 Now, there's so many problems with this.

00:06:02.000 It's almost hard to list.

00:06:04.000 And I had our team put it together.

00:06:05.000 I said, can you just list the problems here?

00:06:07.000 And our team kind of laughed.

00:06:09.000 They said, Charlie, it's going to take three hours to go through the problems here.

00:06:12.000 And the media is sheepish, but they're such frauds.

00:06:16.000 They are such frauds in the media because deep down, this is a joyous day.

00:06:19.000 Deep down, this is a day of celebration.

00:06:21.000 They don't care about process.

00:06:24.000 They don't care about procedure.

00:06:25.000 They want the complete and total Stalinization of our country.

00:06:29.000 So let's go through some of the problems.

00:06:30.000 First, Trump has literally never been charged with a campaign finance violation.

00:06:36.000 And so what campaign finance law did he break?

00:06:39.000 It's a federal statute that you're now charging in state court that you can't even say what law he broke.

00:06:46.000 That's the whole centerpiece.

00:06:47.000 So you're saying that he falsified business records to then cover up a crime, but you can't tell us what the crime is.

00:06:56.000 And business records at the best, at the most aggressive prosecution, would be a misdemeanor.

00:07:02.000 Okay, second, the violation in question, again, would be federal law.

00:07:07.000 Bragg has no jurisdiction over federal law.

00:07:10.000 Third, the federal government has already deliberately rejected prosecuting Trump for this alleged campaign finance violation.

00:07:18.000 Fourth, who's the one that is behind all this?

00:07:21.000 Michael Cohen.

00:07:22.000 Michael Cohn is still the one who wrote the check and later billed Trump.

00:07:26.000 And Cohen was Trump's lawyer.

00:07:28.000 So it's not even clear that legal expenses is false.

00:07:32.000 Number five, these are supposedly violations that impacted the 2016 election, but the supposed law breaking happened in 2017 after the election.

00:07:45.000 So, you write a check after an election, and somehow they need to make an argument in front of a jury that, even though there's no evidence to support this, that Donald Trump writing the check, not even for the full amount, for legal expenses for his then lawyer, was to reimburse Michael Cohen for a payment that Michael Cohen said in a letter to the FEC had nothing to do with Stormy Daniels.

00:08:09.000 And finally, most importantly, the idea that this campaign is a campaign finance violation is ludicrous.

00:08:16.000 So, what the DA is now saying under a completely fabricated new precedent is that you must use campaign finance funds for personal use.

00:08:30.000 For example, if you're running for office and you use it to buy furniture or clothes or things that benefit you, not the campaign, you could get in trouble at the FEC.

00:08:39.000 So, now they're saying you must use campaign finance funds for personal use, that everything is a campaign expenditure.

00:08:47.000 There are countless reasons a person might make an NDA payment.

00:08:52.000 He might do it to protect his marriage, his reputation, his business.

00:08:57.000 He might do it to avoid an expensive legal battle.

00:08:59.000 He might do it just to save himself from the annoyance.

00:09:03.000 But the theory of Alvin Bragg's office is anything that Trump does, which might be remotely help his odds of winning an election, is actually supposed to be reported as a campaign expenditure.

00:09:13.000 And again, Bill Clinton didn't just do this once, he had a whole system.

00:09:16.000 It was called the Bimbo Squad. 1.00

00:09:18.000 He would deploy Hill Dog, they would intimidate the women, sign NDAs, threaten them. 1.00

00:09:24.000 And Bill Clinton just said, oh, it's just part of campaigning.

00:09:27.000 Under Bragg's theory, under this particular theory, if a candidate tries to lose weight, which Alvin Bragg should try to do, that's a separate issue, to look better for a campaign, then their gym membership and Weight Watcher subscription should be a campaign expense.

00:09:45.000 If a candidate is watching TV at home and comes up with an idea for something to say in a speech, they should bill their Netflix subscription as a campaign expenditure.

00:09:54.000 The entire point of campaign finance laws is to clearly separate campaign work from everything else.

00:10:02.000 But Bragg's standard is the exact opposite.

00:10:04.000 He says that any moment the government can maliciously say that everything in your personal life is actually political.

00:10:10.000 It's no surprise that a liberal came up with this because for them, politics is everything.

00:10:14.000 This is an outrage.

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00:11:37.000 CNN calls it underwhelming.

00:11:39.000 Play cut 43.

00:11:41.000 Is it what you thought it was going to be?

00:11:44.000 And are you unimpressed?

00:11:46.000 In terms of a case that's being brought against a former president, it's a little underwhelming.

00:11:53.000 There's not more to it.

00:11:55.000 There's not more violations, tax violations.

00:11:59.000 There's not an incredible new set of facts that we didn't know about publicly.

00:12:04.000 It's really the facts of this case as they have existed for basically almost seven years.

00:12:11.000 They are done with elections as we know it.

00:12:13.000 They've changed the voting laws.

00:12:14.000 They've changed the mail-in ballot precedent.

00:12:18.000 And they have to try to take out Donald Trump.

00:12:20.000 They are trying to ruin your connection to Donald Trump.

00:12:27.000 That your bond, the American people with Donald Trump, they're trying to do everything they possibly can to try to interrupt it.

00:12:34.000 Let's go to cut 40.

00:12:36.000 Alvin Bragg discusses Donald Trump's 34 charges for falsifying business records. 1.00

00:12:40.000 He says, we won't put up with crime unless, of course, you're an arsonist, you're a rapist, drive-by shooting, gang, thug. 0.99

00:12:48.000 It's all fine. 0.84

00:12:50.000 52% of felonies, previously charged felonies, are now being downgraded as misdemeanors in New York City.

00:12:57.000 But if you're Alvin Bragg, then he takes a paperwork issue that is not a crime, it's not even a misdemeanor, standard operating procedure in New York City, and upgrades it to a 34-count felony, anarcho-tyranny, play cut 40.

00:13:14.000 Donald Trump was arraigned on a New York Supreme Court indictment, returned by a Manhattan grand jury on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree.

00:13:28.000 Under New York state law, it is a felony to falsify business records with intent of defraud and intent to conceal another crime, no matter who you are.

00:13:40.000 We cannot and will not normalize serious criminal conduct.

00:13:46.000 We cannot and will not normalize serious criminal conduct.

00:13:50.000 People are getting pushed onto subways.

00:13:52.000 They're being released with no bail.

00:13:53.000 Crime is going up all over New York City.

00:13:56.000 It's become a dystopian hellhole.

00:13:58.000 And he has the gall to get in front of the cameras in a press conference and say that serious criminal conduct should not be normalized.

00:14:07.000 And by the way, not even mentioning all the unbelievable contribution over decades Donald Trump gave to the city of New York.

00:14:15.000 Even Mitt Romney came out and he said, quote, I believe President Trump's character and conduct make him unfit for office.

00:14:20.000 Even so, I believe the New York prosecutor has stretched to reach felony criminal charges in order to fit a political agenda.

00:14:27.000 No one is above the law.

00:14:27.000 I'm not even former presidents, but everyone is entitled to equal treatment under the law.

00:14:31.000 The prosecutor's overreach sets a dangerous precedent for criminalizing political opponents and damages public faith in our justice system.

00:14:40.000 Andy McCarthy makes a fabulous argument on Fox.

00:14:43.000 He said, wait a second, the timeline doesn't even fit.

00:14:46.000 You guys don't know how your facts write in the charging documents.

00:14:49.000 Play cut 52.

00:14:50.000 What Bragg is alleging is that Trump took a series of actions to defraud the voting public in connection with the 2016 election.

00:15:01.000 The indictment then goes forward with all these counts that begin on February 14th, 2017 and continue until December 5th of 2017.

00:15:15.000 That's all months after the 2016 election.

00:15:21.000 Even if what he's alleging had something plausible to it, the actions that we're talking about that he's alleging as criminal and a method of defrauding the public in connection with the 2016 election happened afterwards.

00:15:38.000 Defrauding the public?

00:15:39.000 And Bragg is not even specific in this.

00:15:42.000 I'm going to be very honest, and we have Professor Dershowitz joining us, who's been so clear and so just courageous, honestly, to defy so much of the kind of legal chattering class, is people's unwillingness to call this out is absolute prosecutorial BS.

00:16:01.000 It's nonsense.

00:16:02.000 It is more than political. 0.86

00:16:05.000 This is Soviet show trial stuff.

00:16:07.000 I mean, let me just read some quotes here. 0.87

00:16:09.000 Mark Stern, who is this ridiculous liberal writer, says, quote, not the slam dunk case that Democrats wanted. 0.79

00:16:17.000 Ian Milheiser, senior correspondent at Vox, calls the whole case, quote, painfully anticlimactic. 0.70

00:16:24.000 And it's unclear whether the law Bragg is relying on even applies to Trump.

00:16:29.000 Not even clear whether Trump broke the law.

00:16:31.000 It might not apply to him, Vox.com writes.

00:16:33.000 Andy McCabe, who shouldn't have a pension and committed actual crimes in the FBI, said that this indictment is a disappointment and said, quote, all our legal friends read this indictment and they don't see the way to a felony.

00:16:48.000 It's hard to imagine convincing a jury that they should get a felony.

00:16:54.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.

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00:17:54.000 Joining us now is Professor Dershowitz, author of the new book that all of you should check out, Get Trump.

00:18:00.000 And I understand it's no longer in independent bookstores.

00:18:02.000 What is going on?

00:18:03.000 What country are we living in here?

00:18:04.000 Professor, welcome back to the program.

00:18:07.000 Your immediate reaction to now the arraignment of Trump and the indictment, the indictment that's now been made public, your reaction.

00:18:14.000 It's the weakest criminal case I've seen in 60 years of practicing and teaching criminal law.

00:18:20.000 The basic theory behind the prosecution and the indictment is that when Trump paid $130,000 as hush money to make sure that Stormy Daniels didn't publicly reveal her accusation of an adulterous affair, that when he paid the $130,000, he was obliged to immediately list it in his public corporate forms and tell the reason why he paid the hush money.

00:18:43.000 Now, would anybody ever pay hush money if they had to immediately disclose, oh, I paid the hush money to keep quiet the fact that I had or was accused of having this affair since the time Alexander Hamilton paid hush money when he was the Secretary of the Treasury.

00:18:59.000 Never has anybody ever been prosecuted for not completely disclosing on a corporate form the reason he paid the hush money.

00:19:07.000 This is a nonsense case.

00:19:09.000 It never would have been brought other than the fact that it's Donald Trump.

00:19:13.000 Bragg campaigned on Get Trump.

00:19:15.000 He won.

00:19:16.000 And now he wants the same jurors who voted for him on the platform of Get Trump to help him get Trump.

00:19:22.000 It's a travesty of injustice.

00:19:24.000 It really is.

00:19:25.000 So can you help me understand how you're able to say you falsified business records to cover up a crime, but not even mention the crime?

00:19:34.000 How is that possible?

00:19:35.000 I mean, you've seen thousands of indictments in your career.

00:19:40.000 I don't understand in what universe this is acceptable.

00:19:44.000 Well, he tried to in his press conference go beyond the indictment.

00:19:48.000 You're not supposed to go beyond the indictment at a press conference, but he do it by explaining that the real crime was covering up a campaign contribution, but there is no campaign contribution here.

00:20:02.000 And by the way, a lot of the allegations of the 34 occurred after the election.

00:20:07.000 So it couldn't, how do you make a campaign contribution from the White House, from the Oval Office?

00:20:12.000 Obviously, you'd have to strike out at least half of the allegations if that were the theory.

00:20:18.000 Nobody knows what the theory is.

00:20:20.000 You know, Thomas Jefferson once said that for a criminal statute to be valid, a reasonable person has to be able to understand it if he reads it, reads it while running, running.

00:20:32.000 That's a wonderful image.

00:20:33.000 You're reading something, you're running, and it's so clear you can understand it.

00:20:37.000 Well, I'm sitting, and I've been sitting and studying indictments for 60 years.

00:20:42.000 I do not understand it.

00:20:45.000 Sorry, Mr. Bragg.

00:20:46.000 I'm not smart enough, intelligent, or experienced enough to understand your sophisticated indictment.

00:20:53.000 Or maybe nobody can understand it because it's not understandable.

00:20:59.000 And there is a fair amount of pushback that is finally materializing, Professor, but it's very tepid.

00:21:04.000 And it's like, oh, well, this is disappointing or this is a letdown.

00:21:08.000 Professor, you said something profound on Tucker's program last evening.

00:21:12.000 You said, I actually wish there would have been a smoking gun.

00:21:15.000 It actually would have given me more confidence in the system.

00:21:18.000 Can you elaborate on that?

00:21:19.000 Yeah, look, I'm not a Trump supporter, unlike you.

00:21:23.000 And unlike many of your listeners, I am a liberal Democrat who supports women's right to choose and gay marriage and, you know, the range of Democratic policies.

00:21:31.000 That doesn't matter.

00:21:32.000 I couldn't care less who I'm for or against when it comes to criminal justice.

00:21:39.000 And I just, you have to separate out your political views from your views on criminal justice.

00:21:48.000 No Democrat, no Republican, no liberal, no conservative should be supporting this indictment.

00:21:54.000 Now, there have been some tepid people saying, well, you know, it's not as strong as I hoped it would be.

00:21:59.000 I hoped it would be strong.

00:22:00.000 So I could say, wow, the American system of justice really works.

00:22:04.000 But this makes the American system of justice a terrible parody of itself.

00:22:10.000 And, you know, the fact we have elected prosecutors, that's a problem already.

00:22:15.000 But we have elected prosecutors in New York who run on a campaign to get somebody.

00:22:21.000 That's Stalin. 0.68

00:22:23.000 Yes, it is.

00:22:24.000 You don't run to get somebody.

00:22:27.000 You run to do justice.

00:22:29.000 You see if crimes are committed.

00:22:30.000 And if Bragg were doing justice, he would see two crimes right under his eyes.

00:22:34.000 One, the leaking of this grand jury material.

00:22:36.000 How did we know there were 34 counts?

00:22:39.000 It wasn't Trump who leaked it.

00:22:40.000 It was obviously somebody in his office or some grand jury.

00:22:44.000 And then the indictment itself suggests another crime. 0.95

00:22:47.000 Stormy Daniels probably committed the crime of extorting Donald Trump.

00:22:53.000 And he responded, as Alexander Hamilton did, to the attempt to extort him by paying the money.

00:23:00.000 That's what happens.

00:23:01.000 But then the idea that if you pay the money, you have to then give the reason on your corporate form for why you gave the money makes a mockery of corporate form.

00:23:10.000 So I challenge Bragg.

00:23:12.000 He said yesterday, he turned to the American public and said, this is my bread and butter.

00:23:16.000 This is the bread and butter of my office.

00:23:17.000 We do this all the time.

00:23:18.000 And we do it in sex cases.

00:23:20.000 Show us one case, one case, where you ever prosecuted somebody for not putting the reason why he paid hush money on a corporate form.

00:23:29.000 One case.

00:23:30.000 You can't do it.

00:23:31.000 It never happened.

00:23:32.000 Professor, just as a side note, I don't know if you've been asked this.

00:23:35.000 If you were personally called by President Trump to join his legal team, is that even something you'd entertain?

00:23:40.000 Because you did that in the impeachment.

00:23:43.000 I think you could get this case dismissed very quickly.

00:23:45.000 Is that something you'd be open to?

00:23:47.000 Well, I have a policy of only representing somebody once.

00:23:51.000 And so I'm not going to lawyer, but I would certainly be happy to participate in the court of public opinion.

00:23:59.000 I don't think I could get this case dismissed so easily.

00:24:03.000 I don't think that if you had the best lawyers in the history of the world, Abraham Lincoln and John Marshall, a New York City judge would dismiss this case because that New York City judge's life would be over.

00:24:15.000 Everybody would point to him the way they pointed to me when I defended him.

00:24:18.000 Oh my God, there's the man who helped Trump get free.

00:24:22.000 So I don't think it's going to be easy.

00:24:23.000 I think he probably will be convicted by a New York jury who voted for Bragg and voted for get Trump.

00:24:32.000 It will be reversed on appeal.

00:24:33.000 It will never be affirmed all the way up to the Supreme Court.

00:24:37.000 But Bragg's going to be popular.

00:24:39.000 He'll be reelected.

00:24:42.000 And he'll probably win his case unless there is a change of venue.

00:24:47.000 So with that being said, what is your advice then to the Trump legal team?

00:24:51.000 If you were in their shoes and you see, look, most likely you're going to get convicted here, Mr. President.

00:24:58.000 I mean, that's a cynical yet honest, and I totally agree view because this is, it's so politicized there.

00:25:04.000 Should he plea then?

00:25:05.000 I mean, is that something that you would you think he should fight it?

00:25:10.000 No, he should fight it.

00:25:11.000 He should first make the two motions that might be appealable if he loses, the motion for change of venue and the motion for statute of limitations.

00:25:19.000 It's not appealable if you make a motion to dismiss based on the fact that it isn't a crime.

00:25:24.000 That's appealable only after he's convicted.

00:25:26.000 But there are other motions that can be made and what's called interlocutory appeals can be brought.

00:25:32.000 So I would recommend making those motions, particularly the change of venue motion, and then appealing it if it's lost.

00:25:38.000 Because I think a lot of judges in Albany and other places in New York outside of the city might say, are you kidding?

00:25:45.000 Trying him in the same place where the DA ran on a campaign to get him?

00:25:50.000 Nah, nah.

00:25:51.000 We have to move this to Staten Island, to Long Island, to Rockland County, maybe upstate New York.

00:25:56.000 But, you know, you need fair justice.

00:25:59.000 You can't get fair justice in Manhattan.

00:26:01.000 I could not win a case in Manhattan for Donald Trump, and I'm a pretty darn good lawyer.

00:26:06.000 Yes, you are.

00:26:07.000 And that says something.

00:26:08.000 And so then, Professor, I want to broaden this just for a second.

00:26:11.000 And I want to encourage everyone to get your book, Get Trump.

00:26:13.000 I'm going to ask you about the censorship of your book, which I find to be just extraordinary.

00:26:17.000 But Professor, you're painting a very dark picture of the American legal system, especially in this area of New York, which used to be America's greatest city.

00:26:30.000 And it doesn't seem as if we have any sort of hope.

00:26:32.000 Basically, how did we get here in the shortest way you could describe it, electing DAs, overly politicizing the office?

00:26:40.000 Is this just a culmination of many decades of errors that is now manifested in this outrageous indictment?

00:26:48.000 Yeah, I think the democratization of our criminal justice system, which started with Andrew Jackson, has not been good for America.

00:26:55.000 We're much better off borrowing the English system where they have career prosecutors, civil servants, a director of public prosecution, nobody who's in the government, just making honest decisions about prosecution.

00:27:07.000 But that's not the core of the problem.

00:27:09.000 The core of the problem is we've become radicalized.

00:27:12.000 There's no such thing as a moderate, conservative, liberal center.

00:27:16.000 I used to debate Bill Buckley all the time.

00:27:18.000 And, you know, he was a conservative and I'm a liberal.

00:27:20.000 And then we would, you know, shake hands, go out and have a drink.

00:27:23.000 That's no longer possible.

00:27:25.000 Larry David screams at me. 1.00

00:27:27.000 You're disgusting. 1.00

00:27:28.000 You're despicable. 1.00

00:27:29.000 How can you defend Donald Trump? 1.00

00:27:30.000 Oh, my God. 0.97

00:27:31.000 You know, people tell me the Constitution be damned. 0.95

00:27:34.000 Don't care about the constitution say we have to get Donald Trump. 0.72

00:27:38.000 So there's been this movement and it's getting worse.

00:27:40.000 Let me tell you why it's getting worse, because it's spreading to the law schools and to the colleges.

00:27:45.000 Look what happened at Stanford and YALE and Georgetown, where members of the National Lawyers Guild, which has 100 branches around the country now, have tried to stop and in some instances have stopped judges and other conservatives from speaking on campus.

00:28:01.000 I taught at Harvard 50 years.

00:28:03.000 I bet you that I could not be invited to give a talk on the Constitution at Harvard LAW School without my talk being disrupted.

00:28:11.000 Let me throw that out as a challenge to the Harvard Law School.

00:28:14.000 Invite me.

00:28:15.000 I'll come up at my own expense, no fee.

00:28:18.000 Let's see if you can allow me to make a moderate liberal speech on the Constitution in front of the student buddy at Harvard or whether the radicals will disrupt me because I defended Trump.

00:28:33.000 You hear that, everybody?

00:28:34.000 And I hope the president of Harvard gets the message.

00:28:37.000 Mr. Bacow, I think, Lawrence Batkow, if I'm not mistaken, right?

00:28:42.000 Larry's a good guy.

00:28:43.000 He's on the side of free speech, but he's leaving and he's being replaced by a dean who isn't so much on the side of free speech.

00:28:50.000 He's being replaced by a president of Harvard who was instrumental in firing Ron Sullivan as the dean of one of the colleges because he had the temerity to represent an unpopular defendant.

00:29:03.000 So I'm worried about the future.

00:29:05.000 This is not just today.

00:29:06.000 This is tomorrow.

00:29:08.000 I'm worried.

00:29:08.000 I agree.

00:29:09.000 And Professor, you're right.

00:29:10.000 Some of our politics are polar opposites, but I think it's so admirable because we agree on the fruits of the Enlightenment of due process and checks and balances of the Constitution and decency and dialogue.

00:29:21.000 I'm really afraid we're losing that.

00:29:22.000 I think that's your, please go ahead.

00:29:26.000 If they read my book, Get Trump, you will find bases, grounds for agreement.

00:29:31.000 You will find that, you know, this is not a pro-Republican, pro-Trump.

00:29:35.000 It's not a pro-Democrat book.

00:29:37.000 It's a pro-Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson.

00:29:43.000 It's a pro-American book.

00:29:45.000 It wants to restore America to its position in the world, which is losing.

00:29:49.000 You know, one of the presidents of, I think it was San Salvador, yesterday wrote a tweet saying, don't you ever dare lecture us about democracy anymore.

00:29:58.000 You're trying to imprison the man who's running for president against the incumbent president, and you're telling us about democracy?

00:30:06.000 You know, we are losing our standing in the world as the great paragon of democracy, justice, and due process.

00:30:14.000 I'm almost 85 years old, but I'm going to spend the rest of my life fighting for a restoration of due process and constitutionalism.

00:30:22.000 It may be a losing battle, but I'm not giving up.

00:30:25.000 It's a righteous cause, and I'm a partner in that cause, despite our different politics.

00:30:30.000 If we do not have due process in the Constitution, this whole project falls apart.

00:30:36.000 Professor, tell us about how your book is not being sold in independent bookstores.

00:30:40.000 Am I understanding that correctly?

00:30:42.000 Yes, I've had many friends call independent bookstores where I have for years bought my books, and they say, no, no, no, we're not selling a book called Get Trump.

00:30:52.000 Look, I've had seven New York Times bestsellers, including the number one bestseller, a book called Chutzpah back in 1990, The Case for Israel, Reasonable Doubts.

00:31:01.000 I was a best-selling author for years in the New York Times, but I've been canceled by the New York Times basically since I defended Donald Trump.

00:31:09.000 I used to be the lead editorial op-ed writer from the New York Times on legal issues, never since I defended President Trump.

00:31:18.000 And so now they're manipulating the bestseller lists because they don't put somebody on the bestseller list just because you've sold the most books.

00:31:25.000 My book was number one, number two on Amazon for fiction over a several week period.

00:31:32.000 But they don't count.

00:31:33.000 They only count when there's a variety of places from which the books are bought.

00:31:39.000 And independent bookstores play a disproportionate role in that.

00:31:43.000 So it's a subtle form of censorship done by people on the left who don't want books like Get Trump to become bestsellers.

00:31:52.000 The only way of responding is by you folks making it a bestseller, by buying it on Amazon, buying it on Simon and Sister or whatever, Barnes and Noble, and by calling your stores and telling them, please sell Get Trump.

00:32:05.000 We want to read it.

00:32:06.000 Professor, in 2017, you wrote a book called Trumped Up, How Criminalization of Political Differences Endangers Democracy.

00:32:13.000 That is now five and a half, six years ago.

00:32:18.000 Are things significantly worse today than they were six years ago, in your opinion?

00:32:24.000 Much, much, much worse and getting worse.

00:32:27.000 You know, in Israel, they say an optimist is a pessimist is somebody who says, oh, things are getting so bad they can't get worse.

00:32:34.000 An optimist says, yes, they can.

00:32:36.000 So I'm an optimist.

00:32:37.000 Things are getting worse.

00:32:38.000 Things are getting much worse because they're spreading to the universities.

00:32:41.000 They're spreading to the high schools, but particularly the universities and now the law schools.

00:32:46.000 The law schools used to be a kind of more centerist place because people were going into a profession.

00:32:52.000 Now you have 100 National Lawyers Guild branches.

00:32:56.000 National Lawyers Guild is an old communist organization that used to follow the lines of the Soviet Union on everything.

00:33:02.000 They actually supported Hitler when the Hitler-Stalin Pact had come out in 1939.

00:33:08.000 Now they have become a radical, hard-left progressive, woke presence on college campuses.

00:33:14.000 They were the ones who organized the demonstration at Berkeley where a distinguished judge was prevented from speaking.

00:33:21.000 And they're organizing now all over the country.

00:33:24.000 They're organizing at Columbia.

00:33:25.000 They did organizing at other places.

00:33:28.000 And so these are our future leaders.

00:33:30.000 Some judges have refused to take law clerks from these schools.

00:33:35.000 I think that's a mistake because there are good people at these schools.

00:33:38.000 But the names of the people who have organized these censorship events, preventing people, the names should be published and judges should refuse to hire the individuals who themselves have engaged in censoring free speech.

00:33:54.000 I wouldn't hire somebody who tried to prevent other people from speaking.

00:33:58.000 And I would expect other lawyers would have the same attitude.

00:34:01.000 But I think things are getting worse.

00:34:02.000 I think we're becoming more politicized.

00:34:05.000 And there's no real cure for this.

00:34:08.000 For me, I have a cure.

00:34:09.000 I'm almost 85 years old.

00:34:11.000 I just write books and I hope people will read them and take them into account and do something about it.

00:34:17.000 But the ultimate check in a democracy is at the ballot box.

00:34:20.000 And you have to vote for people.

00:34:22.000 We support the Constitution.

00:34:24.000 Yeah, the Constitution is the great, I think, can heal this.

00:34:29.000 Professor, in closing here, just remind us, get Trump the book.

00:34:32.000 Any predictions?

00:34:33.000 You think now because of Bragg, they're going to indict him in DOJ or Georgia?

00:34:36.000 Do you think they're interconnected?

00:34:37.000 Or do you think because how weak this is?

00:34:40.000 The people who are running the prosecution in Georgia and Florida and Washington are furious at Bragg because he put the worst case first.

00:34:50.000 And it might affect them.

00:34:52.000 But, you know, it could affect them either way.

00:34:55.000 It could affect them by saying, oh, my God, look how weak this case is.

00:34:58.000 We'll look the same and as bad.

00:35:00.000 But could affect them by saying, look, we have to rescue this weak case.

00:35:04.000 Let's present a strong case.

00:35:05.000 In my book, Get Trump, I go through each of the four cases.

00:35:08.000 Every one of them is deeply flawed.

00:35:10.000 You cannot prosecute somebody for having said, find votes.

00:35:14.000 He didn't say manufacturers said fine.

00:35:16.000 You can't prosecute somebody for saying, I want you to demonstrate peacefully and patriotically.

00:35:21.000 So I don't believe there's a basis for any one of those cases.

00:35:24.000 That's why I wrote Get Trump.

00:35:25.000 But there is an attempt to get Trump, notwithstanding the fact that there are no legal bases for doing so.

00:35:32.000 Buy the book, Get Trump.

00:35:34.000 And Professor, if the American Democrat Party was closer to you, I think the country would be in a much better spot.

00:35:38.000 Professor, thank you so much.

00:35:39.000 You're welcome anytime.

00:35:41.000 Thank you.

00:35:44.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:35:46.000 Email us your thoughts as always: freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:35:49.000 Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.

00:35:54.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - April 05, 2023

The Worst Indictment Ever? With Alan Dershowitz

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