Alan Dershowitz vows to fight Trump gag order, if given

Prof. Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School vowed to fight any gag order issued against Donald J. Trump.

Alan Dershowitz, friend of the court

Alan Dershowitz made that vow to Sean Hannity on the latter’s television program on Fox News Channel, according to Breitbart. He told Hannity he regards such gag orders as “tragic.” Trump has not retained Dershowitz to defend him, so Dershowitz vowed to

put together some of the great First Amendment lawyers in America as amicus because we would be the victims.

Amicus, or amicus curiae, means literally “Friend of the Court.” Dershowitz’ first task would be to file a motion for leave to present a friend-of-the-court brief. His legal theory: the First Amendment protects a listener’s right to hear from a public figure. Therefore any gag order infringes upon the free speech rights of those who want to hear from Trump.

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.

Either that, or the ACLU are totally simpatico with anything to shut Trump up, because they do not like his message or program.

Alan Dershowitz also expressed doubt that any judge in Manhattan would judge the case fairly. He specifically referred to the statute of limitations (which might have expired) and motions for change of venue.

This is a fixed case if it’s tried in Manhattan.

About the image

The portrait of Alan Dershowitz within the featured image is a crop of a photo of Dershowitz and Jimmy Wales. Photographer Sage Ross took the photograph and licenses it under a Creative Commons Attribution/Share-alike 2.0 Generic License.