Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz is one of the most eloquent men in America at the moment.
Here’s what he said about the FBI raid on the office of President Trump’s lawyer.
“Look, this is a very dangerous day today for lawyer-client relations. I deal with clients all the time. I tell them on my word of honor that what you tell me is sacrosanct. And now they say, just based on probable cause, even though there was cooperation with Cohen, they can burst into the office, grab all the computers, and then give it to another FBI agent, and say, ‘You’re the firewall. We want you now to read all these confidential communications, tell us which ones we can get and which ones we can’t get.’ You know, if this were — the shoe were on the other foot, if this were Hillary Clinton being investigated, and they went into her lawyer’s office, the ACLU would be on every television station in America jumping up and down. The deafening silence of the ACLU and civil libertarians about the intrusion into the lawyer-client confidentiality is really appalling.”
The issue is principle over politics. On a deeper level, the issue is principle over expediency.
We all depend upon principle for our survival. With respect to government, we depend on principle for the maintenance of our freedom and liberty.
The Democrats and Never Trumpers sneering with delight over the FBI’s brazenly unconstitutional raid on the office and files of the President’s lawyer are fools. They think they can sleep soundly in a world where the very powerful United States government can do whatever it pleases to whomever it pleases, and the Constitution be damned. They assume that so long as it’s not THEIR guy whose rights are being violated, THEY will be safe.
Only someone who grew up in a nation where the individual rights of the citizens are held as sacrosanct would be capable of such ignorant complacency. Only people who look at liberty as an automatic and guaranteed birthright — incapable of ever being violated or taken away — could possess the arrogance and hubris not to see the principles at stake here, regardless of what you think about Donald Trump or his presidency.
Principle is not some abstract, disconnected and irrelevant luxury. Things like attorney-client privilege matter. If the politically incorrect President of the United States is no longer subject to the rights and due process our Constituion promises all of us, then nobody else is either.
Once principle goes, all bets are off. It’s every man for himself. It’s who you know and whose rights and lives you can sacrifice for the sake of your own. These politicians promised us compassion, empathy, equality and a beautiful world. Instead, they have given us the corruption and ultimate anarchy that ended every other significant government in history before us. Thanks a lot for that, esteemed members of the D.C. Swamp.
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