Jed Shugerman was quoted in a Politifact article about Alan Dershowitz citing examples from U.S. history for why Trump should not be charged with obstruction of justice.
Several experts told PolitiFact that Dershowitz’s three examples do not offer strong precedents for the argument that Trump’s actions involving Flynn were clearly legal.
Dershowitz told PolitiFact that he had these examples in mind for each president he named: when Thomas Jefferson told his attorney general to prosecute Aaron Burr for treason, the time Lincoln sought to punish Civil War-era disloyal northerners, and the time Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered a military tribunal for Nazi spies who had infiltrated the United States mainland.
Historians faulted the comparison with these three episodes, saying that Trump’s situation is fundamentally different and, at least in some ways, more problematic.
“Burr may have been a rival, but he went out west and illegally engaged in privateering and allegedly treason,” said Jed Shugerman, a legal historian at Fordham Law School. “I don’t think anyone can say with a straight face that Jefferson was acting corruptly. He properly exercised his powers to stop an alleged mini-republic in the west.”