Trump: Dershowitz interview on ‘witch hunt’ a ‘must watch’

President Trump on Monday touted a Fox News interview with lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who has emerged as a defender of the president on cable news, calling the clip “a must watch.” 

“A must watch: Legal Scholar Alan Dershowitz was just on @foxandfriends talking of what is going on with respect to the greatest Witch Hunt in U.S. political history. Enjoy!” Trump wrote on Twitter.

{mosads}In the interview on “Fox & Friends,” Dershowitz argues Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey could not possibly be obstruction of justice because the president has the constitutional power to fire the head of the bureau. 

“You cannot charge a president with obstruction of justice for exercising his constitutional power to fire Comey and his constitutional authority to tell the Justice Department who to investigate, who not to investigate,” Dershowitz said during the interview.

“We have precedents that clearly establish that.”

Comey testified in June that he believed Trump directed him to end the bureau’s investigation into Flynn.

“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Comey quoted Trump as saying in a memo of a meeting in the Oval Office earlier in the year.

The idea of Trump potentially obstructing justice has come back into the spotlight since his former national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, pleaded guilty last week to lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. 

Trump added fuel to the fire over the weekend in reference to the obstruction of justice issue by suggesting he knew Flynn lied to the FBI when he was ousted from the administration, an apparent shift from the reasoning provided at the time of Flynn’s removal.

“I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies,” Trump wrote on Twitter Saturday. “It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!”