Democrats are pushing to remove President Trump from office after last Wednesday’s (Jan. 6) riots on Capitol Hill, but New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew (D) is urging Biden to oppose impeachment, warning that it would divide the country. Constitutional scholar Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus of law at Harvard University, also said impeaching Trump would pose a danger to the Constitution because it would provide both parties with a loaded gun to use at will in the future.
“I call on President-elect Biden to say ‘enough is enough.'” Van Drew told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” program, “Let’s try to come together.”
Van Drew said it would be “very difficult” to bring everyone together, but he said the first step toward unity would be to drop the impeachment call.
Biden, however, said he would leave the decision on impeachment to Congress.
Van Drew said impeachment would be a “waste of money and a waste of time” and would divide America because tens of millions of people still support Trump.
Van Drew, now a Republican congressman, was once a Democrat but changed parties in early 2020 because of his opposition to impeaching President Trump.
“I really want to know what this party stands for.” “As I said at the (Republican) convention – staying true to myself, not staying true to a party that was once (a party that fit his philosophy) and is no longer,” he said in explaining his change of party affiliation.
In an interview on “Sunday Morning Futures,” Dershowitz said that President Trump’s speech is protected under the landmark 1969 Supreme Court decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio The Constitution protects speech unless it is “designed to incite wrongful action.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, former D.C. Attorney Jeffrey Shapiro said President Trump did not mention violence on Wednesday, much less provoke or incite it. Trump said, “I know that all of you here will soon march on the Capitol and make your voices heard peacefully and patriotically.”
Dershowitz, who was part of the legal team defending Trump’s first impeachment, said, “It would be so dangerous to the Constitution to impeach the president for exercising his First Amendment rights.”
Dershowitz noted that impeaching the president for his words would set a precedent that was not envisioned by the framers of the Constitution.
“It would lie there like a loaded weapon, ready to be used by either side against the other.” That, he said, “is not the purpose of impeachment or the 25th Amendment.”
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