Dershowitz: Mueller Report 'Politically Very Devastating'
By Eric Mack | Sunday, 25 November 2018 12:48 PM
Special counsel Robert Mueller's eventual report on election meddling is "going to be politically very devastating" even if it will not get President Donald Trump on criminal charges, Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said Sunday.
"I think the report is going to be devastating to the president, and I know that the president's team is already working on a response to the report," Dershowitz told ABC's "This Week" on Sunday.
When the attorney general ultimately releases the findings — if the AG does — it will be with President Trump's response, side by side for the public to make their own conclusions, Dershowitz said.
"The critical questions are largely political," he added. "When I say devastating, I mean it's going to paint a picture that's going to be politically very devastating. I still don't think it's going to make a criminal case because collusion is not criminal."
Pinning conspiracy to cooperate with an attempt to defraud the United States on President Trump is "too much of a stretch," Dershowitz told host George Stephanopoulos, whose experience in politics includes being a Democratic adviser to former President Bill Clinton.
"They're going to need more than that," Dershowitz said. "What I think they're going to do, if Mueller's smart, is he's not going to take a chance on being rebutted. He's going to lay out 'just the facts, man' . . . leave it to Congress to decide whether that rises to the level of impeachable offense.
"I still think Trump's greatest vulnerabilities do not lie with Mueller, they lie in the Southern District of New York because Mueller's allegations have constitutional defenses. Whereas if there's any shenanigans having to do with business, they don't have constitutional defenses."