Former Suffolk County Sheriff and public safety secretary Andrea Cabral said an argument put forward by Alan Dershowitz, a member of President Donald Trump’s defense team during his impeachment trial, was shameful.
On Wednesday, in response to a question regarding how the president should conduct foreign policy, Dershowitz advanced a controversial legal theory which claimed a president could invite electoral interference from a foreign power to aid them because, by virtue of being president, the action is being taken in the public interest.
“Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest,” Dershowitz said. “If a president did something that he believes will help him get elected — in the public interest — that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.”
Cabral said the theory echoed former president Richard Nixon’s response during an interview with David Frost in 1977 when he said, “Well, when the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.”
“The notion that he would inflate an individual politician believing that they’re specific reelection is in the public interest with the fact that elections in general are in the public interest, because that’s one of the ways that we further democracy, has got to be one of the most shameful, disgraceful things I’ve ever heard come out of a lawyer’s mouth,” Cabral said. “It is so indecent for him to stand in the well of the Senate and basically say ‘If the president does it, it’s not a crime.’”
Cabral is a former Suffolk County Sheriff and a former secretary of Public safety. She is currently the CEO of Ascend.
