CNN’s Toobin Confronts Dershowitz: You’re Pretending You’re ‘Objective Observer’ and Not ‘Donald Trump’s Lawyer’

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz clashed over the latter’s just-announced role as part of President Donald Trump’s legal defense team in his Senate trial for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Appearing on CNN’s AC360, the pair went back and forth over Dershowitz’s attempts to offer a nuanced characterization of his support for Trump’s case.

“[Trump] absolutely is entitled to the best constitutional defense he can get. What he’s not entitled to is Alan pretending like he’s some sort of neutral observer instead of what he is, which is Donald Trump’s lawyer,” Toobin said, lighting into Dershowitz. “For some reason you don’t want to admit that. That’s up to you. But you are pretending that there is some sort of perfect constitutional sweet spot. It doesn’t have to be a crime, but it can’t be simply being a bad president.”

“That’s like saying a judge is perfectly capable of determining something without an advocate on any side,” Dershowitz replied. “Let me be clear. I’m an advocate. I’m an advocate against impeachment, but I’m politically neutral. That is I would make the same argument if it was a Democrat or Republican. I don’t let my political preferences interfere with my constitutional analysis.”

“You key invoking ‘I would do this for Hillary Clinton.’ Hillary Clinton didn’t behave this way,” Toobin pointed out.

“I would do it for Hillary Clinton if she did behave this way,” Dershowitz responded.

“We’re into like magical hypotheticals here,” a frustrated Toobin noted.

“I’m just saying I’m not partisan. I don’t take my cases based on whether it’s a Democrat or Republican,” Dershowitz insisted “I pass the shoe-on-the-other-foot test. No matter what it is, if the same facts were for a Democrat or Republican, I would make the same arguments. I don’t think that’s true of all of my colleagues, of all of the folks on CNN or on fox or anybody else.”

“I’m just some guy on cable. You are going into the United States Senate and telling the senators how to vote,” Toobin emphasized. “That to me is a very big deal. What bothers me is that you are doing that pretending like you’re some sort of outside, objective observer instead of Donald Trump’s lawyer.”

“I’m an advocate against impeachment,” Dershowitz said.

“Why don’t you want to say his name? That’s who you are. You’re his lawyer,” Toobin pressed.

“I am not part of the strategic legal team. I am a constitutional analyst, I want the impeachment to fail,” Dershowitz claimed. But Trump’s formal announcement of his Senate defense legal team, made no such distinctions between “strategic” or “constitutional” members.

“For the record, it wasn’t the Constitution who called you up and asked you to do this, it was President Trump,” Toobin pointed out.

Watch the video above, via CNN.