Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz panned the performance of the attorneys arguing before the Supreme Court Thursday, saying they gave “B-minus performances.”
Attorneys for former President Donald Trump and Colorado gave oral arguments in an appeal of a Dec. 19 ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court disqualifying him from that state’s presidential primary ballot, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Dershowitz accused Trump’s lawyer of “dropping the ball.” (RELATED: Sol Wisenberg Predicts Maine’s Secretary of State ‘Will Lose’ Court Battle To Keep Trump Off Ballot)
“I can’t make sense of it,” Dershowitz told talk-show host Glenn Beck. “I have rarely seen two less-able lawyers argue so important a case. They have both missed the point. The star of these proceedings are the justices. They are the only ones who made good arguments, they made very good arguments on both sides, but they made the arguments for the litigants.”
Nearly every Supreme Court justice expressed reservations Thursday about removing Trump from the ballot.
“Trump’s lawyer just dropped the ball, made the wrong arguments to the wrong justices, he didn’t understand the room, he didn’t understand the issues, and the lawyer for Colorado, same thing,” Dershowitz continued. “These are B-minus performances in an A-plus issue. It’s shocking.”
WATCH:
Former Trump attorney @AlanDersh gives a scathing review of the oral arguments delivered to SCOTUS in the Trump/Colorado ballot case: “These are B-minus performances in an A-plus issue.” pic.twitter.com/DrpohLpTXV
— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) February 8, 2024
Democratic Secretary of State Shenna Bellows of Maine declared Trump ineligible to appear on the ballot Dec. 28, but the ruling was placed on hold by a state superior court judge. The Maine Supreme Court declined to issue a ruling in a Jan. 24 decision, citing the pending case in the United States Supreme Court.
Dershowitz compared the lawyers arguing the case to the attorneys who advised the presidents of elite universities, a reference to disastrous testimony by the presidents of Harvard, University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“They were so taken up by kind of legal technicalities that they didn’t see the big issues,” Dershowitz said. “It’s shocking to me that these lawyers, both of whom are relatively experienced, just didn’t get it.”
Special counsel Jack Smith secured a four-count indictment against Trump relating to his efforts to contest the results of the 2020 election in August, on charges that included conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted and conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the Jan. 6 proceedings. Smith did not charge Trump with insurrection.
Dershowitz predicted that the court would find in favor of Trump, and turn back efforts to block him from the ballot.
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