committee approving two articles of impeachment against president trump, abuse of power and obstruction of congress, the house rules committee will meet to determine the guidelines on how the debate will unfold in the house floor -- on the who us floor. watch live coverage of house rules tuesday at 11:00 a.m. eastern on c-span3. watch online at c-span.org/impeachment, or listen live with the free c-span radio app. st: joining uss morning is alan dershowitz, the author of the case against impeaching trump. he is also a professor at harvard law school. here is a headline in the new york times about this impeachment trial, trump's impeachment team might add alan dershowitz. will you be representing the president in the senate trial? guest: i can't comment on any possible conversations i have had with the white house. i am strongly imposed -- opposed

to impeaching the president on the grounds proposed by the judiciary committee, neither is found in the constitution. they are the kind of general, vague, open-ended criteria that is weaponized against any president when the opposing party has a majority in the house of representntatives. it is hamilton's nightmare. he said the one thing he feared most was impeachment would matter about the number of votes each party had rather than the guilt or innocence of the person being impeached. we did not want a parliamentary democracy in which a president can be thrown out of office by a vote of nonconfidence. i am strongly opposed to the two iiteria for impeachment but cannot comment on any possible conversations i have fat about playing a formal role in the senate trial. host: are you plinking in formal

role in advising the president? guest: i don't advise him directly. 50ave written two books and articles, the president is free to read them. i speak on programs like this. you can say i have given advice to the president but i'm not in a lawyer-client relationship with the president or his lawyers. i have given advice to presidents going back to bill clinton, barack obama, any president of the united states who asks me for advice. i have advised the president on the middle east peace process, the recent executive order, but when it comes to legal advice, i do not have a lawyer-client relationship with the president or his lawyers. host: has the white house reached out to you at all? have you had any conversations at all? guest: i was at the white house

one week ago and i met with various people. we discussed the executive order. i am in touch with the white house, as i have been with other white houses over time. no formal legal relationship exists at this point in time. i am not free to comment about the content of conversations at the white house. host: you have a new book, guilt by accusation. what is this book about? are you worried, as you told the new york post, that you could be kept from representing the president or having a role because of epstein accusations -- jeffrey epstein accusations against you? guest: i am proud to have written this book. woman whover met the accused me.

in a conversation it was said it is impossible for me to have met her, she is simply wrong. a former fbi director figured there was no basis for the charge. i have been completely exonerated. there is nothing to the charge against me at all. this is a woman who has falsely accused others. i have no fear, i am an open book. i have lived a completely honorable life. i am not concerned about that. but when i was asked to testify on behalf of the republican side, there were some who said this accusation is out there. maybe we shouldn't have him testify. that is what i wrote a book called guilt by accusation. there is no evidence of guilt, there is an accusation. toaccusation might be enough

keep you from representing the president, we are moving to an age of mccarthyism of the kind i grew up in. if you are accused of having an association with communism, you are presumed guilty regardless of the evidence. i have never refused to answer a question because i am an open book. my life has been honorable, 50 anys at harvard, no hint of improprieties. unveiledterday it was the parameters of a senate trial, what he would like to see. he wants mick mulvaney back as chief of staff and john bolton to testify. should they have to testify? guest: the first question is are there significant allegations to justify a trial? the analogy as a grand jury, the house is the grand jury, the senate is the jury, if the grand jury has indicted for something that is not a crime -- if a grand jury indicts a man and a

woman from marrying each other and they are different races, that would be unconstitutional. you would not have a trial, you would make a motion to dismiss. here you have to accusations that are not in the constitution. the framers of the constitution were against us. the first issue is wether there should be a trial at all or wether the allegations fail on their face. that decision has to be made before you introduce any evidence. it would be unconstitutional to have a trial over the marriage. the first step is to determine if the impeachment allegations satisfy the criteria. take for example obstruction of congress. obstruction of congress is because the president as head of the executive branch demanded that before any people in the executive branch -- there would be a judicial order. the supreme court granted a

review in three cases in which they said we will look at that issue. obviously, that is a very plausible issue and that can't be crowned for impeachment. i would strongly recommend democrats, who are now on the fence, or live in districts they know their constituents are not strongly in favor of impeachment, should the very least strike the obstruction of justice from the charges. there is no basis of that in the supreme court. host: on the abuse of power, do you believe the president asked a foreign government to interfere in our election? guest: i am not involved in the facts of the case. the evidence has to be looked at but i don't think that would be grounds for impeachment. i think presidents constantly

take actions that are designed to help their electoral prospects. if you go back to abuse of power and you allow that to be basis for impeachment, abraham lincoln suspended habeas corpus. john kennedy authorized the tapping of martin luther king's telephones. every controversial president has been accused of abuse of power. i don't even get to the factual issues, abuse of power is simply not a criteria -- if the framers wanted abuse of power to be a criteria for removing the president, it would have been simple. put it in the constitution. they did not do that. they did not do obstruction of congress. as jonathan turley aptly put it, this is not a jazz concert or improvisation by congress is to be accepted.

there has to be a violation of the specific terms of the impeachment provisions in the constitution and that has just not been alleged. , whathas not been alleged the facts are is not significant. you have to first decide if there has been allegation of an impeachable offense and i think the answer is there has not been allegation of an impeachable offense. i'm surprised the democrats did not put bribery in there. they left it out. that would have at least satisfied the words of the constitution that they would have had to prove the elements of bribery, which i don't think they could do, which is probably why they left it out. -- it is through vague hamilton's and madison's nightmare. host: a report released last bribery,ey point to

saying the president solicited a bribe by asking the ukraine leader to call for an investigation into the bidens in exchange for a white house meeting and military aid. guest: why not put that as an allegation being voted on by the judiciary committee and then voted on by the house? you can't just throw things in there and accuse people of things. if you are going to make an accusation, put it down as one of the charges and it can be debated. you can't have it both ways. you can't charge abuse of power and obstruction of congress as the only two impeachable offenses and then say, by the way, there is bribery and other things. you have to really decide what you're going to charge the president with. that is the minimum required by due process of law. host: you don't think then abuse -- the democrats' allegation that he solicited a bribe is an abuse of power? guest: the point i'm making is a

different one. abuse of power is not in and of itself a ground for impeachment. even if they could prove abuse of power, that would be a good reason to vote against someone in an election but abuse of power is too broad a concept. i could give you 20 presidents throughout history that have been accused of abuse of power by the opposing party. most recently, when president bush went to war in iraq, he was accused by democrats of abuse of power. president obama was accused of abuse of power for the fast and furious. it is a cliche that gets thrown around, politically. it is the last thing you want to be a specific criteria for impeachment. abuse? what does abuse mean? it is too vague. openon said you don't want ended, vague criteria that can be used against any president by the opposing party.

in hamilton's terms, that would turn impeachment into who has the most votes, which is exactly what we are seeing. this is the first impeachment in history to go strictly along party lines. that is what the framers were very strongly opposed to, that is why they required a two thirds vote in the senate, presiding chief justice. i wish they required a two thirds vote in the house, they did not. they analogized it to 23 members of the grand jury, all you need is 12 to indict. you need a unanimous jury to convict. jim in colorado, democratic caller. your goodank you for review of what we are going through. i have an interesting question. process,impeachment the hearings that we have had, are those subject to judicial

review? guest: what a great, great question. the answer is clear, we just don't know. two justices of the supreme that in ansuggested appropriate case, it might be subject to judicial or review. let's see they think the two thirds is too much. 60% but we have not made 67%, let's change the role and permit impeachment based on 60%. that would be subject to judicial review. i don't like to chief justice, we don't want him to preside. that would be subject to judicial review. what if the house and peaches on grounds not in the constitution? is that subject to judicial review? we just don't know. nobody has tried it. i doubt the supreme court would grant review at this stage in

the case but it might. the constitution has two conflicting points of view. on the one hand, it says the senate shall be the sole judge. that suggests no judicial review. said every act of congress that is unconstitutional should be subject to judicial review in our system. the judiciary is the umpire in our system between the branches of the executive and legislature. the answer is we just don't know and we may never find out. host: wisconsin, independent. caller: good morning. what if president trump spied?

[indiscernible] [indiscernible] guest: i am having trouble hearing him. host: we are having trouble hearing you. did you hear the first part of the? guest: i did not. host: i think he was referring to the ig report they came out last week. suggests weg report have a problem with the fisa court. they don't hear two sides of an issue. they rely on the credibility of the information provided by the fbi. is nonpartisan, a career person who is very objective. there were serious criticisms of the process by which the pfizer report, but allows spying on an american citizen is allowed.

appointlike to see fisa a devil's advocate committee of three prominent lawyers who have security clearance and can present the other side so when an application is made to spy on an american citizen, both sides are heard. assured court can be they're hearing all of the evidence. application, they were denied crucial evidence. were renewed applications after fbi agent had information strongly suggesting the information they originally provided was not valid and they did not inform the fisa court of the new information. host: michigan, republican. caller: good morning. i have a couple of questions. i am not very good at this ad living.

if people make mistakes on purpose or that people sometimes do sloppy things on purpose, that would explain a lot with what happened with the fbi. i would also like to know why the democrats are not upset when ofnton was elected with 43% the popular vote. they did not seem to have a problem with that. i don't know if he knows a lot about history, but i would like to read a little something i wrote. if you words about iraq and war. account, go tod a book without hesitation by a retired general. during theairman clinton administration. if you read 420 through 424.

that gotded kuwait, the u.s. into war to get iraq out. there was an agreement signed requiring saddam to allow inspections. 366 attempts to shoot down u.s. and british planes. -- if thetionary dictionary is correct, how did bush start war in iraq when there had been war for some years? guest: the constitution requires explicitly that no war can be conducted without the approval of congress. wece the second world war, have had no declarations of war. presidents have assumed without necessary constitutional authority the right to start wars or continue wars, or engage

in military activities. clinton did only get a minority of the votes but there was a third-party candidate in that case. he got a substantial number more votes than his major opponent, whereas in the most recent election, the winning candidate got fewer votes than the losing candidate but more electoral votes, but that is the way the system works. if we abolish the electoral college, candidates would campaign more in new york and california and the candidate who lost the popular vote might have won the popular vote. we play by the rules and the rules are the rules of the electoral college, so president trump won illegitimate election. i voted against them, i am a liberal democrat, but i don't challenge the legitimacy of his election. host: president trump tweeted out, read the transcripts, the impeachment hoped is the

greatest con job in american history. should the president play a role in his defense in the senate? guest: absolutely not. i have defended people for 55 years and i never, a lover allow my clients to play a role. they want to assert their innocence, but the burden is on the others to prove guilt and generally i have advised my rolets to play a passive in their own trials. there have been rare occasions where i had a client take the witness stand and testify but the fear of a perjury trap is far too great. you can fall into a perjury trap by telling the truth. if you tell the complete, honest truth but the other side has a witness who has a different assessment and comes forward,

you could be indicted for perjury and i have seen that too often to ever recommend to a client in a highly controversial case to participate factually and actively in his or her own defense. host: have you spoken to the president about this directly? guest: i can't comment about any conversations i have had with the president. i have had conversations with every president since certainly bill clinton. my conversations with presidents have to remain confidential. they are not covered by .awyer-client host: have you spoken to the white house counsel? guest: i met them for the first time at the hanukkah party. i liked him very much. he seemed terrific. one of my former research assistants works for him and introduced me to him.

think the president has some wonderful, wonderful people working for him. one of the great lawyers in our country works for the president. he has a very, very good legal team. host: who do you think will be representing the president and the senate trial? guest: i don't know the answer to that. i think the white house counsel has a role to play as the white house counsel did in the clinton case. i did advise president clinton's legal team during that impeachment now is on the national board of the american civil liberties union when nixon was impeached and i strongly took the view -- i did not think the aclu should support nixon's impeachment. i thought they should defend his procedural rights and safeguards to make sure the constitution was complied with. i have taken the same consistent position with impeachment since

the early 1970's. host: do you think it is appropriate that mitch mcconnell is discussing the impeachment when he is supposed to be a juror with the white house? guest: that happened during the clinton impeachment, as well. wassh the whole process less partisan and political and more traditional. both sides have weaponized it and made it into a partisan debate. it happened during the clinton impeachment and it is happening now. it would be far better in general if the process were more traditional and less partisan. host: how do you assess the white house strategy so far? guest: i think there are many strategies. i think the president's strategy is to tweak. reasonable people can disagree about that, -- i think the president's strategy is to tweet .

i think the strategy has been fairly effective fighting fire with fire. we will wait and see what happens with the impeachment. you judge results after they are completed. host: georgia, democratic caller , you are next. upset with youry this morning. african-american, can see you are letting this white man who is in the white house get away with anything he wants to get away with. he made a statement that he could take a gun and shoot african-americans and anyone else he wants to shoot. on, i opened a shop. hate and despise this man.

he is a klansman. he is the only one who can go out of these rallies and they audience nazis in the and tell them what he could do to african-americans. we are not going to have it. who is the governor of kentucky? it is not matt bevin. who is the governor of louisiana? it is not the mande had. blue.ned virginia we won bucks county in pennsylvania. don't sit here and tell me demographics don't matter. certainly very happy there are large numbers of african-americans who vote in our primaries and elections. i think african-americans can have it in norma's effect on the

elections. effect on enormous the elections. nobody speaks for all african-americans like nobody speaks for all jews. the president never said he could take a gun and shoot african-americans. he foolishly said he could take a gun on fifth avenue and shoot someone and still be president. i don't see how that could be interpreted as having a direct targeting of african-americans. african-americans should vote their interests and in large numbers. voting-american contributed to the election of democrats in the past and i encourage african-americans to vote in large numbers in the primary and elections. host: independent caller. caller: thank you for taking my

call. if we let this thing go with powersoliciting foreign to interfere in our elections, -- our elections will be tainted forever. he has already said he is going to cheat and this is going to destroy our markets. 75% to 80% of the people know that trump did something wrong, even though they don't agree with impeachment, i think it is a dirty process and i think it is bad, but that does not mean the other people -- they are going to vote for trump just because they don't think he should be impeached.

i think the democrats are making a big mistake. the other point i want to make is trump was so crazy about investigating and getting the truth out here and being transparent, why didn't we investigate his kids who don't have a clearance in the white house? i think that is dangerous. why didn't he turned over his tax records? away syria to the russians. he would give away ukraine to russia if the whistleblower had not come out. we have to wake up. you have made some strong arguments why you are going to vote against trump and why people should. people should take all of that into account. nobody is saying the president should not be accountable for his actions.

impeachment is not a substitute for elections. impeachment as you yourself suggested is a political game and it should be reserved for extreme cases. we have only had two impeachments in american history, both failed to secure convictions. one did not go to -- but it succeeded, president nixon resigned. the question for all americans is, the conduct you disapprove, does it rise to an impeachable defense? mean the president should not be held accountable for his actions. host: those criteria? bribery, which basically people know what it means, high crimes, crimes against governance and i will give it example. when alexander hamilton was the

secretary of the treasury, he committed a serious crime of adultery -- a serious crime at the time. and then he paid hush money to quiet down. then he was accused of using treasury funds to pay the hush money, that is when he admitted the adultery and the hush money. that would have been a high crime. adultery is a low crime. what president clinton did is a low crime. the hard word in the constitution is high misdemeanor. my view is that the framers intended criminal type behavior, this demeanor is a species of crime. i don't think the criteria are met by broad allegations such as

obstruction of congress and abuse of power. host: here is what the house judiciary committee wrote in the report about abuse of power, the justice observed the purpose of the constitution was not only to grant power but you keep it from getting out of hand. as the framers created a formidable chief executive, they make clear impeachment is justified for abuse of power. edmund randolph was explicit in this point what explaining why the constitution must authorize presidential impeachment, he warned the executive will have great opportunities of abusing power. madison stated impeachment was necessary because the president might preferred his administration into a scheme of oppression. advocating that new york ratify the constitution. standard of the impeachment. guest: here is the way it

worked. there are two issues. there was a debate if we should have impeachment. people gave reasons for why we need impeachment and abusing power is one of the reasons. that is completely separate. the reasons are separate from the criteria. werethe framers decided on broad reasons for impeachment but very narrow criteria. in order to impeach, you need to find treason, bribery, high crimes and misdemeanors. once you find the criteria, that is the prerequisite. that you could ask if it is in abuse of power. president bill clinton's low crime was not in abuse of power. that was an erroneous use of the impeachment power. this confusion between the reasons that the framers wanted to have impeachment, which included abusing power, and the criteria they settled on, which

were striking a compromise between broad terms and the kind of narrow terms that would restrict the power of congress to remove a duly elected president. crime -- finding a high crime is necessary but not sufficient for removal. that is exactly what hamilton described the full criteria and said all of these partake of violations of public trust, which could be called political and terms like abuse of power. we should never confuse the reasons for why we have impeachment with the criteria that are specific and set out for impeachment. set: house democrats have the criteria is bribery, the president asked a foreign power -- guest: they should have charged him with that.

why did they not charge him with bribery? host: how would they do that? guest: allege they are charging him with three offenses, abuse of power, obstruction of congress and bribery, but they did not include bribery. the democrats made a decision to exclude bribery. they did not listed as one of the criteria and the most elemental aspect of due process is you cannot put someone on trial for something you have not explicitly charged him with. put it in the context of a criminal case. let's assume someone is charged with abusing authority, which is not a crime. the evidence they introduce is bribery and that is not enough. you would move to strike the indictment. any judge would dismiss the case because he had not been charged with bribery and the indictment has to contain all of the elements and a grand jury indictment has to charge specific crimes. the same would be true within

impeachment by the house of representatives. host: texas, tom, republican. caller: thank you for taking my call. i think he is correct. there is no impeachable crime. does anyone know if joe and hunter biden has been investigated by united states government agency? if so, which government agency investigated them? were they proven innocent? where can i see the report that exonerated them? if there was no investigation, there is a possibility they are guilty of something and i would expect the president to look into the matter. it does it matter if joe biden is running for the president or not. guest: i think you are making the same mistake the democrats are making. you are saying we should look into see if there is a crime. that is not how the american system operates. system how the stalinist

operated. i don't want to see hunter biden investigated to determine wether there was a crime. i see no evidence hunter biden committed a crime. did he take advantage of his father's status of vice president and become a member of the board and get all that money? sure. is that a political sin? yes. is that a crime? i don't see it. i don't want to see the criminal justice system weaponized against democrats or republicans. it should be reserved for obvious crimes that jump out at you. what crime would hunter biden have committed? let's assume he did something wrong in ukraine. crimes committed against united states of america, yes, we have a federal practices act but that is limited. i think it would be a mistake to start at this point investigating hunter biden. biden,ue of weather joe

someone i have known for many years and admire, wether or not he did the right thing by saying to the ukrainian authority that he wants to make sure certain things were done, that would be worth looking into because he is the former vice president of the united states and a presidential candidate. but at the moment i don't see any criminal behavior. politically, if you are running for office, you open yourself up to all kinds of political investigations, rather than criminal investigations. i don't want to see the criminal justice system weaponized against either party. host: we will go to montgomery village, maryland, democratic caller. caller: please give me a moment as i try to get my thoughts together. it would be interesting to know -- i know you have been a criminal defender.

i don't want to get into ad hominem attacks. my point is that you said articles of impeachment are incorrect. the reason bribery was not included in the indictment is because the president has obstructed the people who could help congress prove that case from testifying. it is interesting that on one -- i wish the framers had done such and such. high crimes and misdemeanors are whatever the congress says it is. guest: no its not.

caller: i watched the investigative committee and the judicial committee and they could not make the case for bribery because the president obstructed people from testifying under oath. guest: two points in response. number one, the president did not obstruct anything. congress could have simply gone to the court and asked the court to issue orders compelling them to testify and then the president would have had to comply unless there would have been an obstruction of justice. they said they did not have the time to do it. you have plenty of time and can get expedited judicial orders as they did in the nixon case and clinton case. your view that an impeachable offense is whatever the house says it is, maxine waters said that too, she is just completely wrong. [captioning peme