Alan Dershowitz is always good for a quote on legal matters. The Harvard Professor of Law, Emeritus, has represented a variety of clients from O.J. Simpson to Donald Trump, and regularly appears on cable news to opine on the legal matters of the day. He’s controversial—and is prone to confounding both sides of the political aisle—but he is certainly opinionated and not shy about showing it.
I have never seen Dershowitz as animated as he was Monday evening after attending the clown show Donald Trump trial currently underway in New York City, where the former president stands accused of fraudulently misclassifying business accounting records. (Seriously? They want to imprison a former president for putting an expense in the wrong column in an Excel file?)
Dershowitz was laughing, he was gesticulating, he was appalled, he was incredulous. Judge Juan Merchan “went berserk” when dealing with defense witness Robert Costello, he said.
He was appearing on the Sean Hannity show, and he absolutely eviscerated Merchan’s conduct as he oversees this abomination on our legal system. Take a look (his comments start at the 55-second mark):
Hannity and Dershowitz were discussing the judge’s meltdown when defense witness Robert Costello—formerly a lawyer to serial liar Michael Cohen—rolled his eyes after another one of Merchan’s nonsensical rulings.
If the judge’s conduct was that bad, any conviction would likely be overturned on appeal by a normal judge!