In Get Trump: The Threat to Civil Liberties, Due Process, and Our Constitutional Rule of Law, Alan Dershowitz—#1 New York Times bestselling author and one of America’s most respected legal scholars—analyses the unremitting efforts by political opponents of Donald Trump to “get” him—to stop him from running in 2024—at any cost.
Alan Dershowitz has been called “one of the most prominent and consistent defenders of civil liberties in America” by Politico and “the nation’s most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer and one of its most distinguished defenders of individual rights” by Newsweek.
Get Trump makes clear that unconstitutional efforts to stop Trump from retaking the presidency challenge the very foundations of our liberty: due process, right to counsel, and free speech. Those who justify these dangerous departures from the rule of law argue that the threat posed by a second Trump presidency is “different” and “immediate,” while the departures from constitutional norms are longer term and more abstract.
Dershowitz explains that defenders of Trump’s constitutional rights—even those like him who oppose Trump politically—are sought to be silenced; their free speech rights attacked, their integrity questioned, and their careers threatened. Much of the media substitutes advocacy against Trump for objective reporting, while many in academia petition and propagandize against rights they previously valued—all in the interest of getting Trump.
The essence of justice is that it must be equally applicable to all, Dershowitz notes. No one is above the law but digging to find crimes in order to influence an election does not constitute the equal application of the law. In order to assure equal application in comparable situations, he proposes two criteria for indicting a likely candidate of the opposing party: the Richard Nixon standard and the Hillary Clinton standard—and most recently, the Joe Biden standard.
Get Trump warns that regardless of whether this anti-democratic effort to stop Trump from running succeeds or fails, it is likely to create dangerous precedents that will lie around like loaded weapons ready to be deployed against other controversial candidates, officials, or citizens about whom it can be argued that the danger they pose “is different.”
Editorial Reviews
Review
“The fearless, peerless Alan Dershowitz.”
—Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, late Chief Rabbi of Great Britain
“Anyone interested in the true merits of criminal law and very fine writing
must read Alan Dershowitz’s book.”
—Truman Capote
“Alan Dershowitz speaks with great passion and personal courage.”
—Elie Wiesel
“Astonishingly brilliant courtroom presence [and] a subtle and compelling theorist
of civil liberties.”
—Henry Louis Gates
“Alan Dershowitz powerfully advocates the fundamental precept that civil liberties and constitutional rights must be protected for all individuals and groups, even those whose beliefs we reject and condemn, lest we endanger freedoms for everyone. He persuasively champions liberalism as promoting this core but embattled tenet.”
—Nadine Strossen, former president of the National ACLU; professor at New York Law School
“Alan Dershowitz’s commitment to free speech, fundamental fairness, and an open culture of freedom of expression has made him the scourge of both censors and double standards. He understands deeply that those who seek to silence others, either through governmental acts or a revival of McCarthy-era blacklists, are removing the protections of liberty on which all of us depend for our future freedom.”
—Alan Charles Kors, Henry Charles Lea Professor Emeritus of History, University of Pennsylvania
“Love him or hate him, Dershowitz has lived a life that matters, hugely and enduringly. He is a man in full at a time when most of us aspire
to be little more than a presence on Twitter.”
—New York Times Book Review
“An intellectual heavyweight.”
—The Economist
“Loud, provocative, brilliant, and principled….”
—Politico
About the Author
Alan Dershowitz is one of the most celebrated lawyers in the world. He was the youngest full professor in Harvard Law School history where he is now the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus. The author of numerous bestselling books, from Chutzpah to Guilt by Accusation to The Case Against Impeaching Trump to The Best Defense to Reversal of Fortune (which was made into an Academy Award–winning film) to Defending Israel, Dershowitz has advised presidents and prime ministers and has represented many prominent men and women, half of them pro bono.
