Dershowitz: Trump and Netanyahu ‘facing criticism for matters that aren’t criminal’

Dershowitz said neither Trump nor Netanyahu have committed any crimes.

By World Israel News Staff

Attorney Alan Dershowitz drew parallels between the legal troubles facing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump in an interview with Israel Army Radio that aired Tuesday.

Dershowitz, who has been tapped to be part of Trump’s legal team to defend the president during his impeachment trial, said neither Trump nor Netanyahu have committed any crimes.

“President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu are both facing criticism for matters that are not criminal. I do not think that Prime Minister Netanyahu has committed any crime,” Dershowitz said.

“I don’t think that it can be considered a crime to seek better media coverage, or less worse media coverage. So I’m very strongly opposed to the indictment of Prime Minister Netanyahu,” he said.

Dershowitz told interviewer Efi Triger on Army Radio’s Good Morning Israel show, “I’m very worried for freedom of the press and freedom of government in Israel if they start indicting people for trying to get good coverage from the media.”

“Everybody wants good coverage. Every politician wants good coverage. Many politicians vote the way they do in order to get positive coverage,” he said.

“Once we start down this road it’s going to really endanger both freedom of the press and freedom of politicians to vote as they wish for whatever reason they wish,” he noted.

Dershowitz, who has repeatedly said that Netanyahu’s indictment is a danger to Israeli democracy, added “I don’t know of any other country that has criminalized trying to get good coverage and make that a basis for a bribery, or other corruption investigation.”

In February 2019, Dershowitz penned an open letter addressed to Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandleblit, which was published in the Israeli daily Haaretz.

“To bring down a duly elected prime minister on the basis of an expansive and unprecedented application of a broad and expandable criminal statute endangers democracy,” he wrote.

Dershowitz said in the Tuesday interview that he penned the letter because he trusts the Israeli legal system and has “tremendous admiration” for Mandelblit. He said he wouldn’t have written the letter otherwise.