Alan Dershowitz Issues Warning: “If somebody on the grand jury, prosecutor, grand juror leaked the fact that there was a vote to indict, that is a one to five year class E felony under New York”
Alan Dershowitz put Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg on notice saying if Trump gets hit with a gag order he would personally step in and defend Trump. He also warned Bragg that the leaker in his office may have committed a felony.
Alan said: “If they slap a gag order on Trump, I will put a team together and take it to the Supreme Court. Tragically, judges have done that, and they’ve done it recently. I was glad to see Joe be optimistic that they’re not going to do it in this case.
“But if they did do it in this case, I would immediately put together some of the great First Amendment lawyers in America as amicus because we would be the victims.
“There are two First Amendment rights. The right of the speaker but the right of the listener, according to Justice Thurgood Marshall, is just as important.
“But I hope that won’t happen because that would really mean a body blow to the First Amendment.
“And today, you couldn’t even count on the American Civil Liberties Union to defend the First Amendment on behalf of Donald Trump because they would lose all of their funding.
“You know, the only disagreement I have with Joe is a great lawyer. I think he’s too much of an optimist.
“I cannot imagine an elected judge in the borough of Manhattan throwing out this case and having to go to his family and say, ‘I’m the lawyer who freed Donald Trump,’ or his friends or his business associates.
“All he has to do is remember what happened to me when I defended — just defended Donald Trump on the Senate, lost all of my friends, clients business associates, and no judge is going to want to be, quote, ‘Dershowitz-ed.’
“So you’re not going to have an opportunity to get a fair assessment of statute of limitations, change of venue.
“This is a fixed case if it’s tried in Manhattan.”
Dershowitz also warned whoever is leaking details of the case could be in trouble.
He said, “In this case, and that is if somebody on the grand jury, prosecutor, grand juror leaked the fact that there was a vote to indict, that is a one to five year class E felony under New York.”
We don’t know who is the leaker yet. The law is there to protect the innocent from false smears.
Leaking the number of counts in the indictment is most likely not a crime because that information would have been made public eventually.
In New York, a class E felony carries a penalty of imprisonment for up to four years. Examples of class E felonies include identity theft, grand larceny, and assault in the second degree.