The Person or the Constitution?

Falsely Charging McConnell with Inconsistency

by Alan M. Dershowitz, GATESTONE INSTITUTE  •  February 15, 2021

• [I]t is CNN and the other media that failed to understand the distinction between defending the Constitution and defending the person.
• To have voted to convict citizen Trump would have given Congress a roving commission to seek out and disqualify any potential candidate who ever held federal public office or who might run for office in the future. McConnell correctly rejected that open-ended power grab.

• One does not have to agree with the substance with what President Trump did or said on January 6, in order to correctly conclude that the Senate had no jurisdiction over him once he left office, and that the statements he made — whatever one might think of them — are fully protected by the Constitution.
• Back in the bad old days of McCarthyism, anyone who supported the constitutional rights of accused communists was deemed to support communism. That was wrong then, just as it is wrong today to believe that everyone who defends Trump against an unconstitutional impeachment necessarily supports his views or actions.

CNN and other left-wing media went on a rampage after Senator Mitch McConnell delivered his speech explaining why he voted to acquit Donald Trump, despite his belief that Trump had engaged in improper behavior. They accused McConnell of hypocrisy and inconsistency — arguing that if he believed Trump had done wrong, he was obligated to vote for conviction. But it is CNN and the other media that failed to understand the distinction between defending the Constitution and defending the person.

McConnell taught the American people a civics lesson by explaining that the Senate had no constitutional authority to place a former president on trial, even one who had been impeached while still serving in office. In doing so, he echoed a constitutional argument I have been making from the very beginning of this unconstitutional power grab by the Democrat-controlled Congress. The language of the constitution is clear:

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