The FRONTLINE Interviews

Alan Dershowitz

Professor, Harvard Law School

Alan Dershowitz is a well-known defense attorney and academic. He has worked on several high-profile criminal cases, and taught for most of his career at Harvard Law School until his retirement in 2013.

This is the transcript of an interview with FRONTLINE’s Jim Gilmore conducted on July 10, 2018. It has been edited for clarity and length.

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Trump’s Showdown

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So the first time you met Donald Trump.

I met Mr. Donald Trump many, many years ago at a New England Patriots football game in the suite of the owner of the Patriots who had invited me and invited Donald Trump.We shook hands.We said hello.We didn't even speak.

Your impressions of him early on?

I had no particular impression.He was very friendly.He watched about two-thirds of the game, and then he left and flew away by helicopter.

When was the next time you met him, not until he was president?

The next time I met him I went to have dinner with Chris Reddy, who owns Newsmax at the Mar-a-Lago, of which he's a member.I was just having a nice dinner with my wife and Chris and two other people, and the president saw me and said, “You I want to talk to."And he turned and kind of came and started talking to me.He said: “I know you're a friend of Bibi Netanyahu.I need you to send him a message."

Then we started talking about the Middle East.He asked me if I could be helpful in this Middle East issue because I was friendly both with the Benjamin Netanyahu, [and] he knew I also knew Mahmoud Abbas.And I said: “Sure.I have advised presidents since Carter, basically, on the Middle East, and it's one of my passions.I'm always available to you on that issue."

Terrific.Let's switch gears to the events of—starting with the famous Jan. 27 loyalty dinner.The president invites the head of the FBI, James Comey, to come for dinner for two.There's a question.There's a discussion about loyalty.They both have different opinions about loyalty.Define for me, because I think you understand both sides, what's the difference of the language that they're speaking and the way they view it.

A little history.When John Kennedy was elected president, he decided to appoint the most loyal person he knew to be the attorney general.When Ronald Reagan was elected president, he appointed his own personal lawyer, [William French Smith], because he knew [he]'d be extraordinarily loyal .When President Obama was elected, he appointed an extraordinarily loyal person.[Eric Holder].Every president wants a loyal attorney general.Every president wants a loyal director of the FBI. It's only natural.

The question is, during a possible investigation, can you be asking the chief investigative officer for a pledge of loyalty?That raises different kinds of questions.

What was Comey’s position?

Comey’s position is he wanted him to be accepting of orders and instructions from the president, and I think the president's position was, “I want all my Cabinet members to be loyal."Look, the problem begins with the Constitution, which made a serious mistake.We're one of the only Western democracies which has one office that includes the minister of justice, the loyal Cabinet member to the president, and the attorney general, the chief law enforcement officer.Almost every other Western democracy divides those roles, so you demand loyalty of your minister of justice, and you have no control over your attorney general.But when the same person is your political adviser from whom you expect loyalty and the chief law enforcement official from whom you are not entitled to demand loyalty, we have a problem.

Great.Valentine's Day, 2017.Comey is at a meeting in the Oval Office.The president asked everyone to leave, including [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions.He says he has to talk to James.He has this conversation where he basically says, “I'd like you to back off Gen. Flynn."Give me your overview.Of course this is one of the big questions about whether obstruction took place here.Certainly, Comey’s book sort of defines it in his head, basically, as obstruction.What's your overview of that meeting?What took place?How unusual [was it]?And what's the law?

It is unusual, particularly in modern times, for a president to instruct, direct, [or] opine to the head of the FBI as to how we should handle a particular case.But historically, of course, that was the rule, not the exception.Thomas Jefferson demanded the prosecution of Aaron Burr, and he micromanaged it.He called people in, and he said, “Unless you testify against him, you're going to go to jail, and if you do, I'm going to give you a pardon."So we've had a long, long history of presidents who were the head of the unitary executive branch, telling the attorney general who to prosecute or not to prosecute.

Look, we have had that for years.We had it with President Roosevelt, President Kennedy.President Kennedy had a vendetta against Roy Cohn.Everybody knew that, and everybody knew that there would be an attempt to prosecute Roy Cohn.So probably bad policy, undoubtedly not illegal.In fact, the president could have sat down the director of the FBI and said, “I instruct you to drop the investigation,” or he could have pardoned him, which is exactly what President George H. W. Bush did with [Reagan’s Secretary of Defense] Caspar Weinberger and a handful of other people who might very well have pointed the finger back at him.

You mentioned Roy Cohn.Let's talk about that for two seconds.Did you ever meet Roy Cohn?

I knew Roy Cohn.

Give me your impressions of Roy Cohn, but more specifically, the relationship that the president had with Roy early on, and the importance that Roy played in the way he views the law.

I grew up hating Roy Cohn, as all liberal Democrats did, anti-McCarthyites did.I met him, against my wishes, when Claus von Bulow hired him to represent his daughter in a challenge to the daughter’s disinheritance.I was representing Claus von Bulow in the criminal case.So we had to work together, had several meetings with him, never saw him with Donald Trump or even knew about his association with Donald Trump until I read about it in the newspaper.

But, you know, Ray Cohn was the quintessential fixer.It wasn't what he knew; it was who he knew.He knew everybody.He knew every judge; he knew every justice.He knew everybody who had any influence on the judiciary, and you hired him to get access.

And his views and how they affected … Donald Trump and his views?

Well, I think they have something in common.Neither are particularly ideological; they're pragmatic.Roy Cohn didn't really have any ideology, even anticommunist ideology.He was somebody who rewarded loyalty and punished disloyalty to him.I think there's a lack of ideology in many respects in President Trump.They want to win; they want to get elected; they want to get re-elected; they want to get their programs through.But I think they are among the two least ideological people I knew.

And lawyers?The view toward lawyers?Lawyers are the ones that get things done, to fix problems when I get in them?

Well, everybody has the view that a lawyer is supposed to fix the problem.There are different ways of fixing problems.I fix problems by winning cases in court.Other people fix problems by making phone calls.Roy Cohn was famous for his Rolodex.As somebody said about Roy Cohn, he only had two books in his office, none of them law books.He had a checkbook, and he had a Rolodex.Those were the two books that he would use.And he got paid a lot.By the way, he would never set a fee in advance.After he did great favors for people, he would always say, “Pay me what you think it was worth."

Amazing.We could talk all day about that, but we’ve got to rush here.The firing of James Comey: your view on that decision.How political was it?Was it obstruction?When you heard about it, if you had had the ability to advise the president, what would you have told him?

It was a terrible, terrible idea.If he hadn't fired Comey, I don't think we'd have a special prosecutor.[There] probably would be no ongoing investigation now.It was a very bad idea, but it was not an obstruction of justice.I have a view.I've written about it in several of my books, including the case against impeaching Trump.I have a view that, if you are a president, and you engage in a constitutionally authorized act under Article II, that cannot be the act, the actus reus, of the crime of obstruction of justice.And unless you have the actus reus, you can’t start asking about the mens rea.So it doesn't matter what his motivation was or his intention was.If the act itself was lawful, it can't be an obstruction of justice.

Now, think about how terrible it would be if we could start probing the motives of presidents.We would start with George H. W. Bush.Why did he pardon Caspar Weinberger?Well, his motive was to help himself.But of course all presidents have mixed motives.Presidents have patriotic motives, partisan motives.They want to write books after they're finished.They want to make speeches after they’re finished.They want to be treated well by history.Once we start parsing the motives of presidents, we are really sliding down a slippery slope.

Of course the argument on the other side is that this was a situation about stopping an investigation into himself, into the president, and the president is not above the law.How do you view the way [Special Counsel Robert] Mueller will decide or view that?

Mueller is smart enough to know that he cannot charge the president with obstruction of justice for engaging in a constitutionally authorized act, and I believe he won't do that.No president has ever been charged with obstruction of justice for a constitutionally authorized act.Nixon was charged for hush money, telling people to lie to authorities, destroying evidence.Clinton was charged because he allegedly lied under oath.And of course, George H. W. Bush was not charged with obstruction of justice.Mueller is not going to start making new law to apply to Donald Trump.

You were there having dinner with the president the next night.

No, I was there having dinner with the president the night when [Michael] Cohen’s office was raided.

Oh, OK. But you did advise Trump at some point that you thought [U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod] Rosenstein would turn against him?

No, I never had a conversation with the president about that.What I said on television was that Rosenstein should have been immediately recused.You can't be both a witness and heading the prosecution.Rosenstein is the main witness.He's the one who authorized the president to fire Comey.He now says he was pressured into doing it; he didn't want to do it.Those are factual disputes.He has to testify.He has to be cross-examined.How can you be heading the prosecution if you know you're going to be called as a major witness?

So his appointing Mueller, what do you read into that?Do you read into that, to some extent, that he felt that he had been tarnished, his reputation has been tarnished?What was going on there?

Donald Trump's worst enemies are moderate Republicans, precisely the kinds of people who are now prosecuting him, Mueller, Comey, Rosenstein.The Democrats we expect not to like Donald Trump.Hard-line Republicans will like him.It's the moderate Wall Street centrist, Harvard, Yale Republicans who really have an animosity toward him because he's hurting their brand in their view.I just think that Rosenstein said: “He's not playing by our rules, and he's going to fire my friend, somebody who I like, Comey.Hey, I'm going to show him.I'm going to put somebody in charge of the investigation who is Comey, but tougher."

But the president said Rosenstein was the reason he fired him to begin with.

I know.That’s what's so complicated.Look, Rosenstein may have just been following orders or ingratiating himself with the president.Rosenstein does not come off looking very good in this whole situation.

Let's march through some more.Trump Tower meeting, June of 2016.Mueller, some people are saying, could view this as collusion; the agreement to meet with Russians, supposedly with the agreement of the Russian government.Is this collusion as far as you see it?Is collusion a crime or merely, as you say, a political sin?Define that.Define that meeting.What are your thoughts about it?Is it just stupidity?Is it a political mistake?Is it collusion?What was it?

Collusion is not a crime, except if business people collude together to violate the antitrust laws.I'm going to give you the most extreme hypothetical.It didn't happen, but I'm a law professor; I'm allowed to give hypotheticals.So Candidate Trump calls Vladimir Putin and says: “Hey, Vlad, do I have had a deal for you.You don't like the sanctions?I want to be elected president.You know I don't like the sanctions.If you help me get elected president, there's a much better chance that we'll get rid of the sanctions.Can we work together?"That's collusion.You find me a federal criminal statute that that violates.You can't find it.You can't just make up statutes.There should be a law prohibiting collusion between candidates and foreign governments, but there isn't one.

So in that situation, what was that?The fact that they met, that they were looking for dirt on Hillary; the fact that the president writes a memo, coming back in Air Force One, that is supposedly Don Jr.’s, where basically they fudged the fact that what the meeting was all about was, it was sold, all about adoption—how is one to read into that?How do you view it?

Well, I view it as, first of all, not criminal.It's bad enough that today it's a crime to talk to an FBI agent, and he says to you, “Did you murder so-and-so?,” and you say, “No”—that's a crime if you did.You cannot lie to an FBI agent even if you're not under oath.Do we really want to extend that to saying that you can't lie to your friends, you can't lie to the media, you can't lie to the public?There are no crimes involved in that.It may be a terrible thing to have had happen, but again, the distinction between political sin and federal crime is very important to maintain.

And that letter, the fact that the president basically wrote that letter, so he knew enough about what had really taken place, and yet he states—he lies .How does the public view that?

The public should view it very, very critically.But unless this was part of a conspiracy to create a false story for prosecutors, it's not a crime.It is not a crime to create a false story for the press, for the public.It is potentially a crime to conspire to create a false story for law enforcement.

But isn't this, just because the press is reporting it, the public believes it, isn't this also lying to law enforcement?

Well, if you take that argument to its logical conclusion, any lie to the public might be a lie to law enforcement.Criminal laws have to be construed narrowly.There's a concept in law called lenity.It sounds like a funny word, but it means that when you have any doubt about a statute, you construe it narrowly, not broadly.Criminal statutes are not accordions.Prosecutors are not allowed to play them expanding and contracting depending on whether they like the target.That's the problem here.

Let’s talk about Michael Cohen.So April 9, 2018, his house, his homes and his offices are raided.The president is not happy about this.Some people will say it’s very dangerous.Michael Cohen, for years and years, his fixer, from 2007 on, a guy who knew all the secrets; he knew all the secrets in the vault.What took place, and how do you view it?

Would you be happy if you learned that federal agents broke into your doctor's office, your psychiatrist's office, your priest's office, your wife's diary, and took material in order to see whether or not you were talking about any crime?A lawyer is just like a priest, a doctor and a wife in terms of privilege.So I don't blame President Trump for being a little upset that somebody was looking into what he may have told his lawyers.

You should have to have a special, super-super-super-warrant before you can break into a lawyer’s office and look at clients’ files.Now, you can break into a lawyer’s office—he's no different than anybody else—to see if he's committed crimes.But once you start seizing lawyer-client documents, you need to have special rules, and then it shouldn't go to some FBI agent or prosecutor to see whether it is privileged material.It should go to a judge or a former judge who can perform a judicial function.I suggested that.Judge Kimba Wood accepted that suggestion , and she did say it had to go to a former judge.

The dinner that you had that night, I know you didn't advise him specifically about this, but if you could have—number one, that night, how did he appear?Did he appear in any way sort of angry about what had taken place?Did he talk at all about, you know, why these guys are crawling down his neck?Anything like that occur?

Look, I'm a stranger to him.He doesn't know me; I don't know him.I'm a liberal Democrat.He's not going to show me his anger; he’s not going to show me his concerns.I made it very clear before I went to the dinner with some people around him, that please, let him not think I'm going to give him legal advice.The dinner is not privileged.Both of us could be called to testify about the dinner.Let's talk about the Middle East.And we talked about the Middle East.

Obviously the issue of the Cohen investigation and raid came up, and he just basically asked me what I thought of it, and I said, “I think you should have special concerns about invading lawyer-client privilege."But we didn't go beyond that.

If you could have gone further, what would you have told him?

Well, hypothetically, if I were defending somebody whose lawyer’s files were seized, I would make a motion to return the files.I would make sure a judge looked through them, not prosecutors.In the end, that's what happened .

You at some point sort of refer to Mueller as a zealot.

He is.

Not a partisan, but as zealot.And that helps to define some of the actions that he's taken place.Explain that.

He’s not a partisan.He doesn't care if the Democrats or Republicans win.Comey doesn't care if the Republicans or Democrats win.They may care whether Trump won or not, but they're not partisans.But Mueller had a reputation for being way, way overzealous.I had an experience with him, with another lawyer, where we went when he was in the Justice Department and complained about prosecutorial misconduct.He didn't want to hear about prosecutorial misconduct.He said that's a nonstarter.

With the [Whitey] Bulger case up in Massachusetts, he did not perform in a distinguished manner.He was in the U.S. Attorney's Office.He was in the FBI when Whitey Bulger was on the lam for many, many years, and people think the FBI wasn't looking hard enough for him.Four innocent people went to jail, two of them dying for crimes that the FBI knew they didn’t commit .They were covering up for their own informers.So he's a zealot.Look, zealotry might be a good thing if you're after people who should be zealously prosecuted.I'm just simply making a description.He is a zealot prosecutor.

Not his reputation.I mean, if you talk, especially to Republicans before this event took place, and Democrats—

If you talk to Boston criminal lawyers, if you talk to people who have been opposite him in cases, I think they would tell you he was zealous.Look, he hides it well, because he's such a gentleman, and he's such an elegant person.But he's tough as nails.And he is very zealous, and he cares deeply about his reputation.And when you appoint somebody special counsel, and he ends up at the end of a two year investigation costing tens of millions of dollars saying, “Well, nothing there, nothing there folks.No indictments.Go home,” that’s historically not going to serve his reputation.

That's one of the problems with special counsel.They're special.Whereas ordinary lawyers, if they do an investigation and they find nothing, it doesn't hurt their careers.But when special counsel comes up with nothing, that really hurts their reputation.So they almost always come up with something.

So what do you think he will come up with?A lot of people sort of say he might not come up with anything.And then, if that's the case, that's what he’ll report.Or, he will hand it over to Rosenstein, and it will never go anywhere, because he has the right to sort of send it onto Congress or whatever.What do you think is going to happen?

Well, first, we’ve already seen indictments of low-hanging fruit.Judge [T. S.] Ellis has complained bitterly about the process by which this is under being undertaken.He reminded us all that when you squeeze somebody, you can get him not only to sing, but sometimes to compose, to exaggerate, to make up stories, because they know the better the story, the better the deal.So in the end, we may see a lot of low-hanging fruit prosecuted, some guilty pleas.People will say, “Oh, he was vindicated."And then perhaps a report, a report to Congress, a report to the deputy attorney general, it will be made public.

There's a dispute about whether there should be a report, because remember, a prosecutor only hears one side of the story.If there had been a special independent commission like 9/11, hearing all sides of the story, a report by them would have been very, very valuable.

So the Cohen case is sent, or I don’t know what the legal word is, to the Southern District of New York.Why does that take place, and what are the implications to the president?

Look, I think it would have been much better for everybody if the entire case had been sent to the Southern District of New York, to the District in Columbia, to Virginia, and we didn't need a special counsel.The U.S. Attorney's Office are perfectly competent.They have career people who have been here 30 years.They're nonpartisan; they're neutral.They could have investigated this whole case.

The Southern District suggests to me they're looking at Mr. Trump’s business dealings before he became candidate Trump, and certainly before he became President Trump, and that creates problems for any businessman who's in the business of borrowing lots of money, making disclosure statements to banks.I've seen so many cases where people get in trouble for what they put on loan applications.That may be what they're looking into.I don't know.I'm not privy to that investigation.

The danger, of course, I mean, he’s been in business [in New York].There's a gray area to real estate, and in New York, there are relationships, there are payments made, and there's all sorts of interesting things that take place.In this way, does this case, the Michael Cohen case, almost become more dangerous to the president than the Mueller investigation?

I've always thought the Southern District case is much more dangerous to the president than the Mueller investigation.The Mueller investigation he can fight politically.He can say: “This is all political.Look at these 12 Democrats.They're going after me.Nobody would go after another president.They didn't go after Bush."But if they find anything relating to his business dealings prior to his being president, it can be much harder to defend against those.

Now, those won't be impeachable offenses.An impeachable offense is only something that occurs while you're president, maybe while you were running for president; that's a close question.And the statute of limitations may have run [out] on a lot of his business dealings.So nobody knows except the prosecutors and perhaps the defense attorneys what the real vulnerabilities are in New York.

So the Stormy Daniels case.

No danger.No danger whatsoever.

But it sort of fits the scheme that you just sort of said if it was involved in trying to change the end results of the election.

There's no danger to him in the Stormy Daniels case.He's not going to testify.He's learned the lesson of Bill Clinton, who was walked into a perjury trap by his lawyer and ended up being impeached not for what he did, but for what he said about what he did.… President Trump will certainly not testify in any civil case involving sexual allegations.He will have learned the lesson from Bill Clinton's mistake.

… So 10 days after the raid of Cohen's offices and stuff, [Rudy] Giuliani is hired on, and a very different strategy seems to be coming out.There had been a time, the summer before, where Trump had gone to lawyers, Washington lawyers, who said: “Mr. President, patience.It will end soon.We have to cooperate."This is a very different world.Talk a little bit about the transition, why the transition, and what Giuliani brings to the table.That's a lot of questions in one.

There was a significant transition from a cooperating mode—“Let's cooperate.Let's disclose all of the papers.Let's see how we can make this thing go away”—not with a bang, but a whimper.That didn't seem to be working.And I think when they brought Rudy Giuliani, who’s an extraordinarily good lawyer—I was against him in several cases when he was in the Southern District of New York; he’s an extraordinary tactician and cross-examiner—and he changed the strategy, he said: “Let's really make this into a political confrontation.Let's make it into a blue-red debate and conflict, and therefore, if there is any report, we can fight against it politically.Also, don't sit down with the prosecutor.Don't work yourself into a perjury trap.It may be better to resist and be subpoenaed.At least there we have legal issues.We can fight them.We can take them all the way up to the Supreme Court."And, by the way, he's now appointed two of the justices.

… By undercutting Mueller, by undercutting Rosenstein, by undercutting the DOJ, by undercutting the FBI, the talk of Spygate, all of these things undercut these very important institutions that, lo and behold, the president is in charge of.What's your thought on what's going on in this strategy, whether it's effective or not, but what it does to the country?

For Mr. Trump, who is a subject of an ongoing investigation, these tactics, these hardball tactics, are the right thing.It's what I might recommend to Joe Smith who was my corporate client.For President Trump, it puts him in a very difficult position to be challenging, and in some ways trying to delegitimate his own law enforcement mechanisms.After all, part of his constitutional obligation is to see that the laws are faithfully enforced, and by attacking law enforcement over general terms, he may be undercutting what he needs later on in his administration, effective law enforcement.

And by the way, we see the Democrats doing the same thing.Democrats are saying ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is a terrorist organization; let's abolish it completely.They're law enforcement, too.The irony is that all through my life, I, as a liberal Democrat, have been criticizing the FBI, criticizing prosecutors, criticizing judges.That's what civil libertarians, that's what liberals, that's what criminal defense lawyers do.And that's what Democrats often did.Today it’s the Democrats who are saying, “Oh, my God, don't ever, ever question the FBI, the Justice Department, the judicial system."And now it's the Republicans, who used to be the law-and-order types, who are saying, “Oh, the FBI is no good; the Justice Department is no good."We've seen such a hypocritical about-face regarding law enforcement.

And with the results of—

—discrediting law enforcement in the eyes of many people, which is too bad.It's an unfortunate thing.

So when Giuliani on Sunday stated, “Nobody's going to consider impeachment if the public opinion concludes that this is an unfair investigation, and that's why public opinion is so important,” he's being very open about the strategy.

It would be no sense hiding it.It's so obvious.It's so apparent.Might as well get a couple of points for honesty.

But in the end, do you think they're considering the effects beyond today and tomorrow?

Oh, of course.I think they are.I think they're thinking about the potential, if there were to be a major shift in Congress, and if the Democrats took the House of Representatives and offered articles of impeachment, what Giuliani is saying is, impeachment will never get off the ground unless the public is behind it.So he has several audiences.He has the public, the general public.He has Donald Trump's base.He has judges.And for example, with Judge Ellis, Judge Ellis accepted some of these arguments, potential jurors down the line, and swing members of Congress.

And he also has the GOP in the Congress, as you just stated at the end of there, which in fact, a year ago, a lot of the same people that were defending Mueller, that were talking about the fact that the president shouldn't fire Sessions, are now some of the proponents that are screaming and shouting at Rosenstein and talking about this Spygate, where they're saying things occurred which are somewhat unbelievable, and it's very conspiratorial.What happened to the Republican Party?Is it all the fact that the midterms are coming?

I think the Republicans, many of them changed because they saw that the Giuliani strategy was really quite effective.If you go after Mueller, and you go after the Justice Department, maybe it will work; maybe it will help you get elected; maybe it will help Donald Trump survive.I think success is what motivates people.But there was some change of circumstances.I think the [FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter] Strzok messages, talking about, “How can we stop this?We need insurance policy,” those raised questions among a lot of people, whether they really were—not a lot of people, but a small number of people within the FBI, within the Justice Department, and many of them Republicans, who really didn't want to see Trump elected president.And, you know, the FBI should never ever have its thumb, even its pinky, on the scale of an election.

And on Rosenstein they went on him hard, talking about impeachment.Why is that?I mean, of course Rosenstein plays a very important part of this.He is the one that brought about Mueller.He's overseeing many of the decisions that are made in the investigation, such as whether to go into Michael Cohen's homes and the raids and stuff.Why the turn on Rosenstein?And sort of how you view that?

I think Rosenstein caused many of his own problems, first, by writing that letter; second, by not being as cooperative as many people think he should have been in turning over documents.He really upset many of the Republican members of the committees that are investigating this.And I think the recusal issue, people wonder why he didn't recuse himself.The case for his recusal is somewhat stronger, actually, than the case for Sessions' recusal.But I don't think it would change very much if he were recused.The third person, the fourth person in the Justice Department would pick up the slack, and there would be an investigation.

And his role in all of this, at this point, how much can you see his fingerprints on the events of this investigation?

We don't know, but it's possible that we will see a report that won't get into obstruction of justice, because they don't want to create a conflict.Maybe they've taken obstruction off the table because they want to make sure that Rosenstein isn't put in a situation where he has to testify or his credibility is at issue.But Rosenstein does not come off all that well from day one.He had a terrific reputation before he was appointed.

I think anyone who gets close to this situation has their reputation tainted.I feel it myself.I mean, I'm a strong supporter of liberal Democrats, and I voted for Hillary Clinton.I'd be saying exactly the same thing I'm saying if Hillary Clinton were elected and they were trying to impeach her or lock her up.But my reputation has clearly suffered by people thinking I am associated or complicit with Donald Trump's policies, most of which I disapprove of.

And why is that?What is going on in America today that creates that situation?

Well, I grew up in the ’50s, and as a college kid, I defended the right of communists to speak at Brooklyn College.People called me a commie symp, a communist sympathizer.They said I was complicit with communism.When I defended the rights of Nazis to march in Skokie, [Ill., in 1978], I was complicit with Nazism.When I defended O. J. Simpson, I was complicit in murder.But now, this is the first time I've seen where you defend a person's civil liberties, his right not to have criminal charges brought against him unless they're criminal, or to be impeached unless he's committed an impeachable offense, people just are appalled that I, as a liberal Democrat, would do anything which had the effect of helping Donald Trump.I'm not doing it to help Donald Trump.I'm doing it to defend the Constitution.

Two things.One is the president's frustration with Jeff Sessions.Can you help us understand this perspective?

OK, let me go over that briefly.Jeff Sessions should have realized, when the president offered him the job, that he might very well have to recuse himself.He knew he was a witness.He didn't know the precise nature of the investigation.He should have alerted the president to that.The president would not have appointed him.And I think there's frustration there, frustration that he appointed somebody to be loyal, and that person abdicated responsibility.

… Folks have said [that] the hiring of Giuliani and whatnot is a kind of scattershot New York legal strategy.You don't see it that way.

I don’t, no.I don’t see it that way, no.I see an emerging strategy.… I think there were some serious mistakes made early on, obviously one by the president himself firing Comey, and I think they have been trying to adapt to changing circumstances.In the end, I don't know what the final strategy will look like.Stay tuned.

One last thought on that.Is this strategy well-thought [through]?It seemed to be scattershot in a lot of ways.Some people will say, you've got to understand the personality of the president to understand how these strategies are being laid out.You know the man enough.You know him more than we do.What’s going on here?

I think the president's strategy has always been to win, to win.He likes to win everything.But I think he hasn't had a single legal team that has created an overarching strategy from beginning to end.When I take a case, I sit down with my legal team, with the defendant, and I start out with what the closing argument is going to look like a year from now, and I work backward.And every single decision has to be based on what I want to see as the end result.

That wasn't done here.Maybe it can't be done when you're representing the president of the United States.

Because?

Because it's a moving target, it's ongoing, it's changing, and because this president doesn't play according to a playbook.This president, every play is a broken play, and he has to be the quarterback that is constantly improvising.And there are great quarterbacks who know how to improvise.Hard to do it in a legal context.

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