Full transcript: Alan Dershowitz on London Real
3:12 Brian Rose: This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard Law Professor Emeritus, constitutional scholar, and one of the most influential legal minds of our time. You have built a decades-long career at the intersection of law, politics, and civil liberties, representing presidents and high-profile defendants alike, and writing best-selling books on justice, constitutional rights, and political controversy. Your latest book, Could President Trump Constitutionally Serve a Third Term?, tackles one of the most explosive questions in American politics today.
3:44 Whether the Constitution’s term limits can be interpreted in a way that would allow a president to defy conventional wisdom and serve again after two terms. This argument has implications not only for Donald Trump’s future, but for the rule of law, constitutional norms, and the balance of democratic power in the United States. Today I want to go deep into the constitutional arguments, the political context, the normative questions about democracy and the separation of powers, and what your reading of history and law suggests about the future of the US presidency.
4:16 Alan, welcome back to London Real.
4:19 Alan Dershowitz: Thank you for having me. What a pleasure.
4:21 Brian Rose: Great to have you here. I know you recently went to the White House and hand-delivered a copy of your book to Donald Trump. Uh, there we go. Amazing. Uh, this is something that’s been on everyone’s mind.
4:35 Steve Bannon has been saying that Trump will be there in ’29. He’s been saying that for over a year. What was Trump’s reaction to you giving him the book?
4:43 Alan Dershowitz: Well, he smiled. Um, I can’t really disclose what he told me, but what he has said publicly is it’s probably a little too cute. Um, there are bases in the Constitution for allowing him to serve a third term. Look, the reason I wrote this book is if I were back teaching and this issue had come up, I would assign my students this question. I would ask them, write an essay on whether or not under the 22nd Amendment, a two-term president could ever serve a third term.
5:14 And I wouldn’t grade them based on whether I like their answers or their answers support my political views. I would grade them on the basis of the analysis. And I hope my book will be graded on the basis of the analysis as well. It’s not a partisan book. It’s not a book intended to uh encourage President Trump to run for a third term or to encourage Barack Obama, a young man, to serve a third term if extraordinary circumstances arise that allow him to a third term.
5:44 What it out is the deep fallacy of the 22nd Amendment, which doesn’t prohibit a president from running, serving, acting, holding office. It simply prohibits a president from being elected to a third term. That opens the door to possible circumventions of what was clearly the intent of the framers of the 22nd Amendment. The framers clearly wanted to make sure that two-term presidents stay out of the White House. Very simply put, we don’t want them in the White House.
6:16 We don’t want them to be president. We don’t want them to be vice president. Let them be elder statesmen, but follow George Washington’s lead, Thomas Jefferson’s lead. Don’t follow Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s lead. Be a two-term president.
6:29 That was the goal. So, what happens constitutionally when the purpose of an amendment conflicts directly with the text of the amendment, and that’s what happens here? This is not just an accidental omission of the word serve or hold or act. Those words were proposed. In my book, I have an appendix which lists all the proposals that were made and Congress rejected an amendment that would preclude holding, serving, or acting.
7:00 Instead, they adopted a much, much, much narrower term, being elected. So, what should the courts do? What should we do as people in a democracy when you have a direct clash between the text of a constitutional amendment and its obvious purpose? And that’s what I decided to write a book about.
7:21 Brian Rose: Well, maybe we can dive into that 22nd Amendment. You know, you made a reference in our interview recently I thought was interesting in that it’s basically impossible to pass a constitutional amendment these days, and yet this one was passed back then. I’m also kind of curious if FDR had never done three, maybe this would have never come up and then never been a limit. Um, and maybe you could speak on all of those things.
7:43 Alan Dershowitz: Yeah. Well, there’s no question that would have happened. When the framers of the Constitution met back in Philadelphia, there was a big debate about whether to have term limits. Hamilton was involved in the debate, and Madison. And after a lot of discussion, uh, they rejected several proposals.
7:59 One proposal was for a single seven-year term. One term, can’t be reelected. A second proposal was leave it to the people. Uh, let the people decide. If you want Washington to serve three terms, four terms, five terms, hey, that’s democracy.
8:15 Ultimately, what prevailed was simply setting out that the term of the president is four years. But it doesn’t mention anything about whether he can be reelected. Uh, in some countries, for example, you can’t serve more than two consecutive terms, but if you are not consecutive, you can serve a third term. And of course, Trump lost the election of 2020, so uh if that proposal had been adopted, he could serve a third term. But no, they left it alone.
8:46 And then Roosevelt defied convention, and what happened, interestingly enough, he was very popular in 1932, very popular in 1936. When he ran in 1940, even though Europe was at war, England was at war, and it was a time of great crisis, he got many, many fewer votes. And in 1944, he got even fewer votes when we were in the middle of the war, because a lot of people didn’t want him to defy the convention of a two-term president. But he did. And shortly after, he died and Truman was president, uh they decided to uh invoke an constitutional amendment.
9:26 Now, since that time, there have been some proposals. Maybe we should amend that amendment uh to make it clear that a president can’t serve a third term. No matter would like to amend that he’d be starting his campaign now. Let’s talk about what the 22nd Amendment says and what are the ways around it, because you can get pretty creative. So let’s assume the next president are killed the house amendment. to amend the Constitution of the house, but it’s much easier to amend correctly without being elected another one which is a college amendment prohibing to the statute that personous presidency without being elected.
10:24 I don’t think the Supreme Court this one certainly impossible for the next presidential election will be dead on the Electoral College where a lot of people are talking about the last few months.
10:38 Brian Rose: You once said, “I know the names of the individuals. I know why they’re being suppressed. I know who’s suppressing them.”
10:46 Alan Dershowitz: It’s true. I know the names of the people. I was his lawyer and then I was falsely accused by some we’ve been trying for years trying to get her accusation. I didn’t do anything wrong with anybody, and to show you how bad Netflix is. They still have the woman who claimed equal right without indicating even in the bottom of it.
11:10 On Netflix don’t believe mostly nonvers Harvard history the minute I defended Donald Trump I was personally non relatively recently people won’t talk at the farmers market every shirt and said this is the kind which is seen in any way controversial. It’s not controversial. If it’s just, you know, solving a problem that’s obvious to everybody, then it could sail through.
11:52 Brian Rose: How did they sell the 22nd Amendment? Was it that we’re America and we’re not going to have a dictator? Uh, because I’ve heard a lot of people say that if we’re in a true democracy and the people want someone to serve for 8, 12, 16 years, then the spirit of democracy is that they shouldn’t have that limitation put by other people. So I’m just kind of curious how they got that through and what do you make of that argument?
12:18 Alan Dershowitz: Sure. I think it’s a strong argument. Uh, look, Winston Churchill was the great savior of Great Britain during the Second World War. What happens immediately after the Second World War? Gets thrown out of office uh by nobody uh uh who gets elected because of unemployment uh problems.
12:36 On the other hand, uh, the former prime ministers of Germany and the current prime minister of Israel get elected over and over and over again. And there’s nothing undemocratic about that. In Netanyahu’s case, of course, he was elected, then he was unelected, then he was elected, then he was unelected, and who knows whether he’ll be elected again. But uh why not let the people make those decisions? Um, I don’t think that multi-term executives are inconsistent with democracy if the elections are fair and open.
13:10 If the elections are like the ones that occurred in Venezuela, no, that’s different obviously, but even a one-term president elected Venezuela style or Cuba style or Russian style or Iran style, um, that’s not consistent with democracy. So, as the great judge Learned Hand once said, democracy isn’t dependent so much on the law as what exists in the hearts and minds of the citizens. And that’s true, but amendments and law can help promote democracy. And I think the framers of the 22nd Amendment felt that there was a risk that the next person running for a third or fourth term won’t be Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
13:51 He’ll be more like Stalin or Hitler, and we have to prevent that through law. So that was the debate. It was very much influenced by Roosevelt’s term in office.
14:02 Brian Rose: Okay. All right. Well, now let’s dive into the loopholes. And you said that’s kind of why uh lawyers exist, because it is all about the loopholes. And like you said, you would assign this to your students.
14:12 And so let’s talk about what the 22nd Amendment says can and can’t happen and what are the ways around it, because you can get pretty creative.
14:20 Alan Dershowitz: Yeah. Well, let me tell you first what won’t happen. Uh, nobody’s going to run for a third term. Uh, there are all kinds of barriers to that, because uh states determine who’s on the ballot and there would be enough states to say, look, if you’ve had two terms, look at 22nd Amendment, we’re not going to let you run, but that there are many ways in which that can be circumvented. Let me give you a potential example.
14:45 We live in an age of terrorism. It is not beyond the possible range of possibility that a president and vice president could be assassinated at the same time. Uh, we already have what’s called the designated survivor when we have the State of the Union message. The cabinet is in the Congress, but one member of the cabinet stays home, uh, and is surrounded by guards in case, God forbid, there’s a massive explosion and everybody is killed, you still need to have a president.
15:13 So let’s assume the president and the vice president are killed and then uh the current speaker of the House is incompetent, either very old or of a different party or no experience, and so the House of Representatives elect somebody. You don’t have to be a member of the House to be elected speaker of the House. Elects uh Obama to be speaker of the House or Clinton to be speaker of the House or Trump to be speaker of the House, and then according to the statutes that person ascends to the presidency without being elected.
15:45 That’s probably the most likely scenario that could occur. Another one, which is much, much less likely, is you have a second term president who runs and um loses in the Electoral College or even wins in the Electoral College, but he tells his electors not to vote for him. So on the first ballot, the Electoral College fails to have a majority for any one candidate. Then it gets thrown to the House of Representatives, which chooses, not elects, a president, and we’ve had that happen uh in the past, where the House of Representatives, Jefferson, others were chosen to become president by the House of Representatives rather than the Electoral College.
16:31 In my book I catalog a series of possible ways. They’re thought experiments. They’re not designed to tell people what to do in the real world. But uh as a law professor for 50 years, I specialized in creating hypotheticals for the students to address. And the reason to have a hypothetical is when you have a hypothetical, you don’t know the name of the person.
16:55 Uh, it’s behind a veil of ignorance. You’re addressing a systemic problem under the Constitution without knowing who will benefit and who will lose. That’s what I try to do in the book. I’m not seeking partisan advantage. Um, you know, I’m a I’m for 60 years I’ve been a Democrat.
17:13 Um, I did vote against President Trump uh both in 2016 and 2020. My wife will not allow me to reveal who I voted for in 2024. So, to preserve my marriage, I’m keeping that uh a secret. But I’m not a Republican. I’m not a partisan.
17:31 And so the book is not designed to help anybody serve a third term. It’s really designed more to get the 22nd Amendment to be amended to make sure that the will of the people and the will of Congress is reflected in the statute. Because we’ve never really had a case where you have a clear statute that says clearly a person can be serving a third term if he’s not elected and you have clear intention, no, he shouldn’t be allowed to be serving a third term.
18:01 So when you have that direct clash between the text and the intention, you have different schools of thought. You have the textualist school that says absolutely just look at the words of the Constitution. You have the purpose school that says no, you look behind the text. You look at the purpose. Um, we have the kind of living Constitution school that says, ah, purpose, ah, it doesn’t matter, text, whatever is best for the people today.
18:27 Let’s interpret the Constitution that way. And so this problem and this book is a perfect way to address in an abstract sense the conflict between the different schools of thought. Now the other thing it exposes is hypocrisy. Many people, when Clinton served a second term, many Democrats figured out ways to have him served a third serve a third term. These same people are now against it for Trump.
18:52 And the same people who are against it or in favor for Trump were against it for Clinton. So you have to think about the problem in a nonpartisan way. Otherwise, we’re just uh doing partisan politics under the rubric of the Constitution.
19:08 Brian Rose: So Alan, I did a little Monte Carlo simulation in my head and thought about what this actually might look like in practice. And let’s say, for example, that you’re right, maybe Trump wouldn’t be silly enough to run because maybe uh places like Colorado, which almost didn’t let him run last time, would specifically prohibit him being on the ballot, making it more difficult. But let’s say the game plan was a Vance-Rubio ticket, which in my opinion will be the ’28 ticket, with this agreement that once we get in, boss, we’re going to move you to the top once we resign.
19:38 Uh, I guess it would be uh President, VP, and Secretary of State would all resign and then it would go to the House and they could elect Trump. I don’t get it.
19:45 Alan Dershowitz: It wouldn’t work that way. The way it would work, close, but the way it would work is the president and the vice president resign. Then it would be the speaker of the House, and the Republican-controlled House could name Trump as speaker and then he ascends to the president. It doesn’t have to go to the House of Representatives. It could if you couldn’t get an Electoral College victory, but in the book I address that because obviously that’s Steve Bannon’s approach.
20:11 He says that’s what should be done. It should be overt. The next election you in the Investment Club.
21:16 Whether or not Trump should serve a third term and Rubio and uh Vance will just be puppets. Uh, they’ll, you’ll vote for them, but you know, you’re really voting for Trump. I don’t think the Supreme Court would sustain that one because that’s such a clear circumvention. But I do think the Supreme Court would sustain the other scenario of a president of an unplanned ascension to the presidency through presidential assassinations or through a deadlock in the uh Electoral College.
21:48 So I think there’s a difference between running for president a third term, which I think the Supreme Court and the states would create barriers to, and serving that third term through an unanticipated tragic event. Uh, one I pose in my book is that there is a massive terrorist attack on the United States at the same time it has another pandemic, and so we have the perfect storm and none of the people qualified to take over are able to do it, and so the public demands that one of the prior uh two-term presidents who’s very popular serve as president. Would the 22nd Amendment ban that?
22:32 And my answer is probably not. Probably that would happen, but not the calculated uh Steve Bannon approach. I think that would fail.
22:42 Brian Rose: And you know, maybe that would be the right thing. It was so much uncertainty. You know, you’d think it would be great to have someone that people felt confident that could actually run that country. You know, when I was game planning the um the Vance-Rubio scenario, either overt or covert, I also thought that once you got to that day, that they might just stand up and say, “You know what? The old man’s 84 now or 83.
23:04 Um, we’re just going to not do what we told you we were going to do. You know, when’s the next time I’m necessarily going to get elected president?” JD could think, in four years I’ll take it, but you might not. And they might just um you know quash the plans to move him into power, and that it seems to me that could happen very easily if it was something some type of covert plan and hard to guarantee even with the most loyal people.
23:30 Alan Dershowitz: I agree with you, and that’s why when you have a constitutional amendment, it should be written in clear and certain terms. It shouldn’t be ambiguous. You know, it’s not like the First Amendment: Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. That’s vague. Uh, what is freedom?
23:44 What is the freedom of speech? What is due process? What is equal protection? Those are all subject to debate. But when you have constitutional qualifications like 35 years, it’s not 34 and 11 months.
23:56 It’s 35. And it’s not 33 but very mature. It’s 35. I guess the worst part of the Constitution, the one that nobody can understand, is in the Bill of Rights in the Seventh Amendment when it says in any case involving $20 or more, you get trial by jury. What does $20 mean? $20 back in 1793 or $20 today, which would be $500 or $1,000.
24:24 Uh, no constitution should ever have that kind of specificity of $20. In fact, when Madison wrote that amendment, he left the numbers blank and then Congress filled in stupidly uh $20. So, you know, there’s something wrong with the Constitution that’s too specific, but there’s also something wrong with the Constitution that’s too vague. You don’t want to say a person has to be old enough to be mature to run for president. You should say 35 years.
24:50 Now, you might want to amend that because at the time of the Constitution, 35 was pretty old. You didn’t, people didn’t live beyond 50 or 55. Today, 35 is a kid. Uh, who wants a 35? Look, we have a 34-year-old mayor of New York and I’m not happy with him.
25:07 Uh, and people aren’t happy with him. So uh you know, you want specific criteria for who is president, and one of the specific criteria should apply to whether you can have a third term, and the 22nd Amendment fails that test.
25:22 Brian Rose: It’s interesting how you said that you think the Supreme Court, even a conservative-leaning one, might block it if they thought the intention was to specifically circumvent you know uh that amendment. I didn’t realize that would come into play potentially.
25:36 Alan Dershowitz: I think so, but you can’t be absolutely sure. There would be a couple of justices who say text is text. We’re not going to fool around. You know, we’re not lawmakers. We’re law enforcers.
25:48 But I suspect that even this court, you’d get a pretty clear majority, 7-2, 6-3, perhaps not 9 to nothing, saying this is too obvious a circumvention of the intent of the 22nd Amendment. We’re not going to permit it. Now, would the Supreme Court really prevent the person from serving for president? Remember what happened in Andrew Jackson’s day when the Supreme Court made a ruling that was extremely unpopular? President Jackson said, “All right, they made the ruling.
26:17 Now, let them enforce it. I’m not going to.” And there were those in the South in 19 uh 54, I remember this, I was 16 years old in high school. Uh, there were those who said, “You ruled that uh schools must be desegregated. All right, desegregate them.
26:34 We’re not going to get involved in that.” But Eisenhower did and made sure that the Supreme Court’s ruling, which he didn’t necessarily agree with completely, was implemented. So there’s always going to be a dispute between the rule of law and the rule of politics, between the text of a constitutional amendment and what its real purpose is. And this book tries to explore all those issues in a nonpartisan intellectual way. It’s the kind of, if you wanted to be at a Harvard seminar on the Constitution and you didn’t get to go to Harvard, this book will give you a pretty good sense about what a seminar that I taught at least would have been like.
27:15 There are no right answers or wrong answers necessarily. There’s just better analysis and not so good analysis. And that’s what I try to promote in this book.
27:27 Brian Rose: Well, it’s going to be uh interesting to see what happens. You know, Trump seems to be demurring now. He actually doesn’t seem to be entertaining this. And it seems as if, I wouldn’t say he’s tired. His pace is incredible.
27:39 But then again, you fast forward to three years. How does anybody walk away from that office? It just seems like it’s possible.
27:46 Alan Dershowitz: And I can tell you, I was with Trump in the Oval Office a couple of weeks ago. You know, 25 minutes alone basically. The man is a bundle of energy. He’d love to serve a third term. I have no doubt about that.
27:59 If the 22nd Amendment didn’t exist, I have absolutely no doubt he’d be starting his campaign now. He’d be running for a third term. It would depend a little bit on the midterms, but the midterms generally go against the incumbent president. Maybe I think it’ll be split this time. The Senate will stay in the hands of the Republicans.
28:17 The House may or may not. And that means he won’t be able to get his programs through for the next two years. That would incentivize him to run even more, because if he ran he would probably carry with him the Senate and the House, and he’d have another at least two years to implement his program. So, uh, I have no doubt that Trump would like to run for a third term, but he believes that it would be too cute for him to try to do it directly, but if he were appointed um you know, two years into retirement, he’d be 90 years old.
28:50 But hey, I’m 87 and I’m doing a pretty good job here today. So, uh, um, you know, let’s not be ageist.
28:58 Brian Rose: Yeah. He turns 80 in June. I believe that’s where he is right now.
29:02 Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and again, like you said about age, you know, you could argue another hundred years from now, you know, we’re all going to be living much longer as well. So um this question becomes even maybe more relevant uh for how many someone
29:16 Alan Dershowitz: And I think not only living longer but they’re living longer and healthier, and um you know, David Ben-Gurion served as prime minister of Israel uh well into his 80s. Of course, Biden didn’t do so great uh and neither did Reagan into their old age. So we have examples on all sides, and uh people should be judged based on their individual ability. One problem is as you get older, um, you can seem really, really, really uh very, very wise one day and then you know, within a week or two weeks, your mind diminishes a little bit.
29:56 Uh, obviously that could happen with younger people too, but it’s much more likely to happen with older people. So there have been those, by the way, who have suggested age limitations on the top, that is, you have to be at least 35 but you can’t be over 75 uh to run or serve as president. Um, that’s been uh not accepted so far, but maybe someday as we get older and older and older and people begin to run as octogenarians, uh, maybe we will see an amendment that imposes age restraints on the top.
30:27 States have it. States have it. I remember getting a call from the Chief Justice of South Carolina who turned 70 and he was on the top of his game. He was golfing every day. He was, you know, doing great things.
30:39 And they made him retire. And he wanted me to bring a challenge to mandatory retirement age. But I did the research and discovered that there was really no basis uh to challenge that. That would be up to the states. And so he went on to become a multi-billionaire practicing lawyer instead of being a judge making $125,000 a year.
31:00 Brian Rose: Right. Well, and Trump’s pace is incredible to watch. It just really is. And uh I don’t know many people half his age that could keep up his pace for a year straight now. So, uh, yeah.
31:12 Um, to be determined, to be determined to be continued. You mentioned Mamdani. I’d like to get to that, but you know, the Epstein files are what a lot of people are talking about the last few months. You’ve been talking about them for years. Uh, we famously had you on the show a year or two ago where we talked about them, and I think there was the Netflix series coming out and you had fought back and been exonerated about any of those charges.
31:32 Then we saw all these files dropped, and then we saw a couple that seemed to be redacted, and then I’ve heard that maybe you believe that Maxwell should be granted immunity for testimony. Where are, what do you think right now of the files, and what is your brief history with Epstein?
31:50 Alan Dershowitz: Well, my history is that I was his lawyer and that I was falsely accused by some woman who then retracted her accusation and said, “Uh, she may have confused me with somebody else. She may have misidentified me,” and she dropped all of her lawsuits and claims uh against me. Uh, look, but that led me to a conclusion that I feel very strongly about. The files should not be redacted, because if they’re redacted, what happens is the accusation is out there, but the material that shows questions about the credibility of the accuser is out there.
32:23 Let me give you two examples. There’s a woman named Sarah Ransome. Um, she accused everybody. She accused um, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Trump, Richard Branson, uh, you name it. She accused everybody.
32:36 She said she had videotapes of them having sex with children. And that became a story. And then eventually it turned out she was lying. She didn’t have anything. She made up the whole story.
32:45 If you have just the accusation and you withhold the credibility issues because you call them victims or survivors, many of them are victims and survivors. Some of them are fake. Uh, many of the women who collected $50,000 from Epstein never met him, never saw him. Uh, their lawyers just said, “Come on, just say you were there. You were living in Palm Beach at the time.
33:06 Go collect the 50,000.” And they did. Or there’s a woman named Farmer who claimed that uh she was the first person to file a notice with the FBI. Yeah. But read what she said.
33:18 What she said essentially is Jeffrey Epstein never touched her. She was never raped. She was never assaulted. He stole a photograph from her uh that was used as an art photograph for modeling. Uh, so that would seem to cut against her her claims.
33:35 Also, she’s a woman who denies the Holocaust. She said all Jews are pedophiles and uh all pedophiles are Jews and they’re all under the control of um the Rothschilds and uh um you know, Israel’s behind all this, and you get all of that. And so my feeling is you have to turn out everything. You can’t just say we’re going to protect anybody who says they’re a victim or a survivor. If they are a victim, if they are a survivor, okay, but we have to be able to determine that.
34:07 Otherwise, it becomes a new form of McCarthyism. There was recently a number of congressmen who said, “We’re going to get up in front of Congress and we’re going to read the list. We’re going to read the list of the people who are accused. We’re not going to say anything about who the accusers are or give the people on the list the right to challenge it. We’re just going to read the list.”
34:26 That’s exactly what Joseph McCarthy did. He would stand up in front of the Senate and say, “I have a list of 70 communists that are now serving, and here are the names.” And they all lost their jobs. Some of them were communists. Some of them were socialists.
34:40 Some of them were ordinary people who are not even in politics, but they never had a chance to defend themselves. So, I’m worried that the new Epstein McCarthyism has not been opposed by the American Civil Liberties Union, by other groups, because people are terrified to be called victim shamers or Epstein supporters or anything like that. It’s become toxic, and it really hurts civil liberties. So, I want, as I’ve said from day one, full and complete, unredacted disclosure of everything so that the American public can make up their own mind about who’s telling the truth and who’s not telling the truth.
35:21 Brian Rose: You know, Trump has always said that this was suppressed by Democrats for many years and then they were then pushing for it, but a lot of the people implicated, I mean, including the former, you know, president of the Democ, you know, you know, the of the Democratic Party. So, is it strange to you that it seems to be a talking point of the left to keep release the files, release the files, or release the files, when ultimately it might be a lot of them being incriminated.
35:49 Alan Dershowitz: Well, I don’t think anybody’s going to be incriminated. I think what we already know is all there is. Uh, there’s going to be more about Clinton flying on the plane. We know he did that. He flew to Asia um with Epstein.
36:02 We know that Trump um knew Epstein in the early ’90s. We know that I was his lawyer who got him the deal that people think was a sweetheart deal. That’s what lawyers are supposed to do. We’re supposed to get the best possible deal we can for our clients. So, I don’t think there’s going to be much coming out.
36:20 But whoever the party in power is, the other party is going to take advantage of that and say, “Oh, they’re suppressing. They’re suppressing.” And when the Democrats are in power, the Republicans say they suppress. And you know, everybody suppressed because they’re afraid to say, “Let’s put everything out there,” because nobody knows exactly what’s in the files. Um, and uh um you know, I know what’s in the files because I know what I did and what I didn’t do.
36:46 So, I was the one who was right from the beginning. So, I turned everything out. That’s very selfish of me because, you know, I didn’t do anything wrong. I’ve never had sex with anybody but my wife since the day I met Jeffrey Epstein. So, I have nothing to be concerned about.
36:58 But you know, Prince Andrew had something to be concerned about, because even if he didn’t do what he was accused of doing, he was known as Randy Andy. He was known as somebody who did have um sexual uh relations outside of uh his marriage. That’s not a crime, but it’s enough to put a person who’s a prince in harm’s way. And uh I think foolishly he settled the case. And um that was probably at the pressure of his mother, because I now think that uh had he gone to trial, he probably would have won.
37:37 Brian Rose: Yeah, he might be right on that. I think you once said, quote, “I know the names of the individuals. I know why they’re being suppressed. I know who’s suppressing them.”
37:46 Alan Dershowitz: Yeah, it’s true. I know the names of the people. Um, and they include very prominent people and uh, most of them are false and I know who’s trying to suppress them. Um, I have one case, for example, of somebody who’s not very well known, but uh, he was accused of going to the island uh, for three days with one of the women and having sex with that woman. It was described in great detail, and uh he has succeeded in managing to suppress his name because he has a good lawyer, but nobody will care when his name comes out because nobody’s really ever heard of him.
38:24 But uh there are probably other instances of that as well where lawyers have managed to suppress uh negative information about people. And so um for me, you can’t turn out half the material. You can’t have redacted disclosures. You have to have either uh no disclosures, which is not consistent with democracy, or full and complete disclosure. I think it was Brandeis who said that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and this needs a lot of disinfectant.
38:53 And so I’m hoping that everything will be turned out. Will it include a couple of emails from me uh to him when I was his lawyer in which I told a joke or something like that? Who knows? Maybe. It’s possible.
39:04 I don’t care. Um, you know, I didn’t do anything wrong. So, let it all, let it all be out there. I don’t think anybody should be trying to suppress anything.
39:13 Brian Rose: Is it coming out still? I mean, they released a lot of video and they lost a lot of pictures. Is this something that is still going to be released, or do we know yet?
39:22 Alan Dershowitz: No, there will be more released. There’s no question. Apparently, the Southern District of New York has a million documents, including my lawsuit. I had a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York and I was deposed and my accuser was deposed. I want all that out there.
39:40 I have never claimed privacy, lawyer-client privilege, anything. I want it out there, but a lot of people, in my case, the opponent didn’t want it out there. Uh, and I understand why, but uh let’s get it all out there and let’s put this behind us. You know, Epstein,
39:58 Peter Thiel took a half a million dollars and turned it into a billion dollars using the have to have the financial education and the deal flow. That’s it.
40:58 Is a distraction from the real needs that our nation and the world faces. And I think we’ve had enough of Epstein. But um apparently the media, particularly CNN, can’t get enough of it. That’s all they seem to want to talk about. As if there are some great national security secrets.
41:18 For example, the absurd notion that Epstein worked for the CIA or worked for the Mossad. It’s insane. He never had any connections to any intelligence agencies. If he had, who do you think the first person he would have told? Me, when I was his lawyer.
41:32 It would have helped me get an even better deal. I asked him, Epstein, what can you tell me? Can you tell me anything about Trump? Can you tell me anything about Clinton? Can you tell me anything about intelligence agencies?
41:44 And he told me everything he could. And I got him the deal. Helped him get the deal. But I would have gotten a much better deal if we could have said that he worked for intelligence agencies, but he didn’t. And I’m sure that’s why he didn’t tell me.
41:59 Brian Rose: And how did he die?
41:59 Alan Dershowitz: Boy, I don’t know the answer to that. He was not suicidal. Uh, he was a guy who loved life and lived it to the full. And he was also about that Monday or Tuesday to be arguing for bail. And remember, at the time, a lot of this stuff hadn’t yet come out.
42:18 He might very well have gotten a bail. And so the case for his suicide is a weak one. Why kill yourself on the eve of perhaps getting released? You could kill yourself any time. You know, if you’re in prison, there’s no way of stopping an intelligent person from killing himself.
42:36 So, on the one hand, I don’t believe he was suicidal. And I think the case for suicide is a weak one. And the medical examiner in New York, who was this great medical examiner, Michael Baden, said that the ligatures and stuff around the neck were inconsistent with suicide. On the other hand, what’s the alternative theory, that somebody got to him in a federal prison and managed to kill him? That’s also a weak theory.
43:02 So, I’m a skeptic. Um, you know, my favorite song in history is from Porgy and Bess. It Ain’t Necessarily So. And I’ve lived my life by it ain’t necessarily so. I doubt everything.
43:15 I question everything. So, as to the suicide, it ain’t necessarily so.
43:22 Brian Rose: It’s interesting. I heard Kash Patel speak about it in detail, and apparently he’s actually very familiar with that facility, you know, through his past. And, you know, he just came out and said, I just don’t see how anybody could have done that to him.
43:36 I’m very with that facility answer anybody wanted to hear from him, you
43:40 Alan Dershowitz: Yeah, look, I’m familiar with that facility. One of the worst things about being a criminal lawyer, maybe the worst thing about being a criminal lawyer is you have to go to prison and jail all the time. And I’ve been on more death rows and more prisons and more jails than any innocent person should ever be at. And I’ve been at the Brooklyn and Manhattan houses of detention, and they’re hell holes.
44:02 They’re terrible places, but the security is unbelievable. I mean, uh, I remember once having to go to, uh, prison and, um, they took my shoes off and they confiscated my right shoe because it had some metal in it. I don’t know anything about metal. And sure enough, I had stepped on a nail and the nail, small nail, didn’t affect my foot, but was in the shoe and they caught it and they got it. Um, and so the idea that somebody could get into a prison and kill Epstein, if it was a killing, it was an inside job, obviously.
44:41 Brian Rose: And do you think Maxwell should be given immunity for her testimony?
44:43 Alan Dershowitz: Well, I think she should be released. I think she’s serving his prison term. Um, whatever she did didn’t deserve 20 years at all. Uh, had he stayed alive, she probably never would have been prosecuted, but somebody had to be prosecuted. And so they gave her his prison term.
45:01 And I think she’s serving it. So I do believe she ought to get uh a commutation or a pardon, not a pardon necessarily, but a commutation to time served or to a lesser sentence, 5 years or something like that. But uh the sentence she got is way disproportional to what she was accused of doing.
45:21 Brian Rose: All right, let’s talk about Mamdani, New York City. He’s been there now for a week or so. Um, what do you see happening here? How do you feel about the election? Were you surprised that he was elected?
45:34 Alan Dershowitz: I was surprised. I was surprised at the fact that between 20 and 30% of New York City’s Jewish residents uh voted uh for him. These are young left-wing Jews who want socialism and they’re willing to tolerate socialism um and tolerate his bigotry uh to elect somebody from the left. This was a victory of the hard left. It was also a defeat for the center.
46:02 Had um there been only one candidate running against him, it would have been a much closer election. He probably still would have won, but he wouldn’t have won with a mandate. Um, and you know, he is the mayor and he will be the mayor, and uh, we who care about civil liberties and about equality have to keep an eye on him. Uh, if he tries to arrest Netanyahu when he comes to New York, I will be at Netanyahu’s side. I’ve been Netanyahu’s lawyer for a long time, and we will file a lawsuit in federal court immediately to prevent that from happening.
46:35 If he tries to get federal agencies to engage in BDS, boycotting only Israel, not boycotting Iran, not boycotting China, not boycotting Cuba, uh, not boycotting Venezuela, but boycotting only Israel, uh, that’s against New York law and against federal law. So, we will be bringing So, I think I’m going to be a busy lawyer with Mamdani uh as mayor. But, uh, look, the people spoke and uh it was a fair election. He did a very, very good job as a candidate. You got to give him credit for that.
47:06 Let’s see if he does a good job as mayor.
47:09 Brian Rose: You know, he had that famous meeting with Trump where, you know, they kind of buddied up a bit, but then ever since his first day in office, it seems as if he’s using uh the office of the mayor of New York to be kind of the voice of the Democrat Party, and he’s calling out global events and calling out, you know, the Venezuela uh grab, etc. Um, and he really is using that not just to run New York City, but really to be the voice of the party. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised by that.
47:40 Alan Dershowitz: No. And he’s a very smart guy. He understands that um if you are really nice to President Trump and if you say nice things about him and go to the Oval Office, um, you know, Trump judges people not based on um what others say about him, but his own impression. And he managed to persuade Trump that uh he’ll be um a decent uh person. Whether that will last over the next years, nobody knows.
48:08 But uh right now they seem to have a tolerable a tolerable relationship. Um, but it worries me because I think that the Mamdani phenomenon is not limited to New York. It will apply in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It will apply in Chicago, probably San Francisco. It will not be statewide or nationwide.
48:30 I don’t think Mamdani can win a statewide election in New York. Uh, neither could AOC. Neither of them could. I mean, Mamdani is disqualified from running for president. Maybe he can hire me to find a loophole in the Constitution to say, well, natural born doesn’t really mean that he has to have been actually born in the United States.
48:50 Uganda.
48:50 Brian Rose: Would you take him as a client, Alan? Of course you would.
48:53 Alan Dershowitz: I, no, not on that issue because it would be frivolous. If he were convicted of a crime, of course, I would take him as a client. I don’t choose my clients based on whether I like them. Believe me, if you’ve seen my list of clients, they are not the most likable people in the world. But um you know, I followed the tradition of John Adams when he represented the British soldiers accused of the Boston Massacre and won the case and uh you know was much criticized by some um people in Boston for doing it.
49:25 Um, and he set a bar that Abraham Lincoln followed and uh Thurgood Marshall followed and others followed, and I’m trying to follow in their footsteps. I have defended many, many people who I hate. Uh, I had a client named Leona Helmsley who was so obnoxious that I told her I would never meet with her in public because she did terrible things, but I’ll represent her in court. Uh, it’s like a doctor. Um, or it’s like a priest when priests have to give absolution to sinners.
49:56 Uh, they don’t pick and choose which sinners they give absolution to. Anybody who wants to come back to Christ uh before his death, a good priest will do that and will keep the secrets. And a good lawyer is the same.
50:08 Brian Rose: And look, I think you’re right about Mamdani. He uh first of all, he is an excellent politician.
50:14 I’ve watched him answer questions, and um he really knows how to play the part. Um, and I think we will see more of this, especially in those large cities who tend to go left and tend to respond to the messaging of this, you know, tax the rich and um, we’re going to spend all of this money and really play up the woke card. I actually ran to be mayor of London in ’21 and ’24. And the current candidate, who by the way says he wants to be mayor for the next 20 or 30 years, um, you know, he’s doing a very similar thing there.
50:44 Um, where it’s, you know, the largest city in London, probably responsible for 20% of the tax revenue, and yet he can play up against all of those usual things that you can in a large city and continue to get reelected.
50:57 Alan Dershowitz: And remember who supports people like this? Uh, not only do the poor people support him, but the children of the very rich support them, too. The trust fund babies, people who have never had to work for a living. The most privileged people in the world are the ones who say, “Oh, we’re against privilege and we’re going to support Mamdani.” If you look at the demographics of who voted for Mamdani in New York, you’ll find that you’ll find the poorest people and the richest people.
51:24 Uh, he got a lot of votes in the Upper West Side, the Upper East Side. He got almost no votes in um you know, really uh ethnic districts where people have made it on their own. He got no votes virtually from Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, um, and other ethnic Americans. But uh for some reason of self-hatingness uh he got a lot of support from the Jewish community even though he is so virulently and thoughtlessly anti-Israel. One other example about Israel.
51:57 He thinks it’s okay for Jordan to be a Muslim state, for Saudi Arabia to be a Muslim state that bans non-Muslims, for Qatar to be a Muslim state that doesn’t allow a Christian Bible to be sold, but to have Israel be a Jewish state with equal rights for Arab citizens, that’s unacceptable to him. So, he applies a different standard to Jewish statehood than to Muslim statehood. That’s anti-Semitism. That’s outright bigotry. And I wish uh I could debate him on some of these issues.
52:27 And I think I would expose him for a deep-seated uh anti-Semite, not just an anti-Zionist. He uses anti-Zionism as a cover for his anti-Semitism. And that’s what makes it so surprising that so many Jews uh voted for him. But he is, as you say, a very, very able politician.
52:46 Brian Rose: Yeah. I saw him uh on probably a left-leaning network, and they were trying to goad him into taking shots at Trump and taking shots of this and that, and he was just even keel, wouldn’t take the bait either side. And I saw for a young man, you know, he’s an incredible politician, which is what I always say of my uh my opponent in the mayor. I can say a lot of bad things about him, but you know, these people know how to survive. And
53:11 Alan Dershowitz: But remember too that some of the great dictators of history have been great politicians as well. So just because a person is slick and a good politician, you know, Stalin was beloved, uh, people had pictures of him hanging on the walls, and Yasser Arafat and others. Mussolini, uh, some Jews voted for Mussolini in early elections in Italy. So um you know, people can be fooled by good politicians, but it’s important for people to get behind the facade and look at what these people really stand for.
53:45 Democratic socialism has never, ever worked. What happens is this. Either you compromise the democratic part of it, the way Venezuela did and Cuba did, or you compromise the socialist part of it, which is what most Scandinavian countries and Israel did. Israel started as a socialist country. Uh, Ben-Gurion was a socialist.
54:06 Um, um, and and Shimon Peres was a socialist. But is Israel a socialist country today? No. Is Scandinavia socialist? No, not really in the true sense of the word.
54:17 So, I’ve never seen a successful democratic socialist country that preserves both full democracy and full socialism. I think they’re incompatible.
54:28 Brian Rose: Yeah, I think so too. Staying on the same note, Alan, when you look at your alma mater of Harvard and kind of the way it behaved a few years ago, um even when I look at my alma mater, MIT, I was shocked that we were, you know, right behind you, um when it came to really not taking action on the anti-Semitic behavior on campus. And you also see the Trump lawsuit and the pressure he’s putting on them. What do you make of all of that? Do you go back?
54:55 Do you visit? Do you wash your hands of the place? Do you hope that it’s going to change?
54:59 Alan Dershowitz: They’ve washed their hands with me. Um, they have not, you know, I was one of the most popular professors in modern Harvard history. Uh, I would have hundreds of students line up to get into my classes. But, uh, the minute I defended Donald Trump uh, on his first impeachment, I was persona non grata at Harvard, never yet been invited back to the Harvard Law School where I served for 50 years. Um, I was invited back to the Kennedy School once and I was invited back by a Jewish organization, Chabad, but uh, but Harvard has basically terminated its ties with me because of my representation of Donald Trump.
55:37 What kind of a message does that send to the students? I wrote a book about that. Um, it’s called Trump to Harvard, GoFund Yourself, Harvard to Trump, Let’s Make a Deal. Um, and what I tried to do is assess both sides. Uh, I think uh, Harvard’s current president is terrific.
55:56 Um, he’s a wonderful man. He’s trying very hard. I think MIT’s president is good. I think Brown’s president is good. A lot of the presidents are good and they’re trying to strike an appropriate balance between defending academic freedom.
56:11 You know, you get a professor recently um at Cornell who uh calls on an Israeli student and the Israeli student says something and the professor says, “Well, I’m not going to let you be in my class,” uh makes the student come to him after class, and that, you know, Cornell suspended the professor, fortunately. But there are a lot of professors who believe their job is to propagandize students, to instill their values into the students. In 50 years of teaching at Harvard, I never once expressed a personal view in class.
56:47 Never. Um, I told my students, I’m not here to teach you what to think. I’m here to teach you how to think. Whatever your views are, I’m going to challenge them. Whatever my views are, you should challenge them.
56:57 You want to get an A in the class, write an exam or an essay that fundamentally disagrees with me and shows that I’m wrong. You want to get a C in the class, just parrot everything I’ve said in the class. You’ll get everything right and you’ll get a C. That’s a mediocre grade for a mediocre performance. So, I don’t think we’re seeing enough critical teaching at universities.
57:18 I think we’re seeing too much propaganda inside the classroom. I’m not talking about outside the classroom. A professor has academic freedom outside the classroom. A professor does not have academic freedom in the classroom to try to propagandize students to that professor’s point of view. The classroom is a sacred place.
57:36 You have to be neutral and objective. The Chicago principles, that are followed more in theory than in practice, say universities must be neutral. They are the forum for disputed views to be put forward. But when you have a class like in Cornell about Gaza, apartheid, and genocide, and you won’t allow an opposing point of view to be expressed in the class, and the teacher says, “I have academic freedom to use the class to try to persuade people that Israel is engaged in genocide.”
58:10 That’s not teaching. That’s propaganda.
58:13 Brian Rose: Wow. Do you expect the president to make some change?
58:18 Alan Dershowitz: I think it’s a process. I think Harvard is fighting back. I think the Harvard administration would like to settle the case. I think President Trump would like to settle the case. I think there are extremists on both sides.
58:30 Some faculty members who don’t want the case settled. They want this to be a fight. And some within the administration that don’t want it settled. They think that Trump benefits from having a fight. So, I think we’ll see whether or not uh wiser minds prevail and the matter is settled the way it has been at most or many universities.
58:49 Brown settled it. Other schools settled it. And I think there are settlements that are really possible. But the settlements must entail making sure that uh universities remain neutral and prevent intimidation of students, prevent violence against students, while allowing freedom of speech outside the classroom. But inside the classroom, a professor is constrained to be kind of a moderator and not a promoter of a particular political ideology.
59:21 What the London Real Investment Club actually does for you, it gives you the keys to
59:35 Brian Rose: And to be clear, the only reason they’re doing this is because Trump is withholding federal funding. Otherwise, they might not even bother.
59:59 Alan Dershowitz: Well, I think yes, I think that probably is what stimulated it, but I think that today some um board members and some donors are also uh having an impact on universities, and um and you know, what I decided to do once October 7th occurred is to basically uh put a little pause on my serious books.
1:00:48 I’ve written, you know, 55 serious books and I decided to promote a series of pamphlets to be given out free on college campuses. So, the first one was um The 10 Big Anti-Israel Lies and How to Refute Them. The second one was The GoFundMe. Then there’s one called Palestinianism. And the final one that’s just come out is Jewish Blood Is No Longer Cheap.
1:01:10 We’re giving these out free on college campuses. I would never ever dream of assigning any of these pamphlets to a class or even telling the students about the pamphlets in a class. Uh, not in the class. In a class, I take the opposite point of view. For example, I’ve been a lifelong opponent of the death penalty.
1:01:29 Uh, since high school, when I was a law clerk on the Supreme Court, I helped write an opinion against the death penalty. In class, I would be the devil’s advocate supporting the death penalty because nobody else would. I would be making all the arguments in favor of the death penalty so as to challenge the students to come up with better arguments against it. And if I ended up with students who were strongly in favor of the death penalty and had better arguments, I did my job.
1:01:54 In fact, one of the people who was most uh powerful in promoting the death penalty was a former student of mine, and he used my arguments outside of class to promote the death penalty. And although you know I wish I had changed his mind outside of the classroom, that’s my job, to make you a better thinker. If you’re a conservative, I want you to be a better conservative, a liberal, a better liberal, a centrist, a better centrist. That’s the job of the teacher.
1:02:21 Brian Rose: Well, I hope we can get our universities back to where they should be. Um, you know, I was at MIT from ’89 to ’93, and when I saw kind of what was going on the last few years, it’s just shocked me because it, especially for that institution, it should not be a place where anyone ever feels uncomfortable to say anything. And I mean, no, no, it’s sushi, but um, I really hope that they get back on track.
1:02:45 Alan Dershowitz: The two people I met at MIT at the same time were Benjamin Netanyahu, who was a student there in the 1970s, and Noam Chomsky. Um, and you couldn’t imagine two more different people, but they were both very closely identified with MIT, and that’s the way it should be. Schools should not be uh breeding grounds of one particular ideology over another. That’s what communist schools do. That’s what happens in the Soviet former Soviet Union, Cuba.
1:03:13 Uh, that’s what happens in Iran today. That’s what happens in the Palestinian Authority, Birzeit University. Um, in the Palestinian Authority, you can’t go there and make a case for Israel or for a two-state solution. You have to be down the line accepting what Birzeit University wants to do. But at Hebrew University, you can make the case for a Palestinian state.
1:03:36 You can make a case against Zionism. You can do whatever you want, because that’s a true university. And I think we have to get back to having universities that are forums for diverse points of view.
1:03:47 Brian Rose: Yes, I do too. I just want to finish on your thoughts on the actions in Venezuela over the weekend and then maybe the subsequent uh kind of deals or uh proclamations we’ve heard afterwards, whether Trump’s running it or they’re giving away their oil. And is it also true that you’re going to be representing Maduro in the Southern District?
1:04:07 Alan Dershowitz: No. No, I don’t think that’s true. Um, I don’t. He has a good lawyer. He has a good lawyer and um I would not turn down a case just because I disagreed with a person’s u politics.
1:04:20 Um, I think the Venezuela thing, I have a split decision on that. I think the decision to go in and arrest an indicted defendant who can’t be extradited is completely consistent with not only international law but precedent. The best precedent, of course, was Obama’s decision to go in and take out Osama bin Laden. Now, the difference is that Obama issued a kill order. He didn’t want him arrested.
1:04:45 He wanted him killed. He wanted him taken dead, not dead or alive. Um, that is much more questionable than sending in troops to bring him out alive to have him tried in New York in front of an excellent judge uh where he’ll get due process, represented by excellent uh lawyers. So, I think that part was perfectly acceptable morally, legally, and in every other way. When you get to we’re running um Venezuela, uh, you have to wait and see what that means.
1:05:17 Uh, it should be returned to its status as a democracy. It was a great democracy for many years. It was really a shining light of uh South America, and now it’s a place where people escaped from, many of my neighbors. I live in the winter in South Florida in Miami Beach, and the place is now filled with Venezuelan immigrants who left the country, uh, Cuban immigrants who left the country. I mean, you can tell a country by who leaves it and who wants to come to it.
1:05:44 The greatness of America is represented by the fact that everybody wants to come to America. Everybody wants to be a citizen. Nobody wants to stay in Cuba. Nobody wants to stay in Venezuela. Nobody wanted to stay in the Soviet Union.
1:05:58 Nobody wants to stay in Iran. So, people vote with their feet, not only at the ballot box.
1:06:05 Brian Rose: Last question. Are you still having a hard time getting uh pierogi at Martha’s Vineyard or is
1:06:10 Alan Dershowitz: I have, I can’t get pierogi at Martha’s Vineyard. The guy won’t sell me pierogi because I’m a Zionist. But I have to tell you, so many people have offered me free pierogi, which has been so much better. There’s a store in Florida that says I’ll have free pierogi for life, and their Polish pierogi, which are absolutely phenomenal. When I was in Poland recently, I ate pierogi.
1:06:31 They were great. So, I’m, you know, it was an important event because here you have a city-sponsored farmers market where everybody should be able to buy and sell everything. And this bigot wouldn’t sell me a pierogi because he didn’t like my Zionism. I was wearing a shirt that said “Proud Zionist.” And I was probably wearing this pin, which I still wear um for the one hostage body that hasn’t been returned.
1:06:58 So, I’ll continue to go back to the farmers market where I’ve been going for 50 years, and I’ll buy products that I like, but I won’t buy pierogi anymore. I’ll get my pierogi from better, more authentic pierogi makers. But, you know, that’s life. Um, in Martha’s Vineyard, um, I’m People won’t talk to me. Some of them won’t talk to my wife.
1:07:19 My wife got excluded from a club recently, a feminist club, a feminist club that claims that they have judged women on the basis of their merit, not the men in their life. And they basically accepted my wife until she filled out a form disclosing who her husband was. And as soon as it was disclosed who her husband was, she was told not to apply to the club, that they wouldn’t accept her as a member. This is a feminist club. This is the kind of McCarthyism that we’re seeing from the left these days, and I’m going to continue to fight it.
1:07:53 Brian Rose: Yeah, I believe you are. Uh, what’s next for you? Obviously, publishing this book on Trump. I’m sure you got a few other books up your sleeve. You’re broadcasting regularly on your channels.
1:08:02 What’s next for you, Alan?
1:08:04 Alan Dershowitz: Well, I have a new book coming out on July 4th, celebrating American Independence. And it’s a book, it’s called Founding Fathers and One Jewish Mother. And it compares the Founding Fathers of America with the Founding Fathers and Golda Meir of Israel. And it’s based on my own document collection. I have original copies of um the uh Declaration, the Bill of Rights, um, great books.
1:08:29 I have original copies of Herzl’s The Jewish State. And so this is a coffee table book that illustrates these great documents of history. And I have an essay on each of the on each of the documents. And then I just spoke to my wife last night about this. We just came back from seeing uh Porgy and Bess at the Metropolitan Opera, and I said, you know, It Ain’t Necessarily So has been my motto throughout life.
1:08:53 I think I’m going to write a book entitled It Ain’t Necessarily So: Why I Question and Doubt Everything. Uh, just a general philosophy book about the need for us to be doubters and questioners about every aspect of life.
1:09:09 Brian Rose: I love that. What about a Netflix movie about your life?
1:09:12 Alan Dershowitz: Well, Netflix won’t have anything to do with me. They did Netflix thing of Jeffrey Epstein. And they still, by the way, to show you how bad Netflix is, they still have the interview with the woman who says, who claims that uh she had sex with me, without indicating even in the bottom of it, she’s now withdrawn that claim. She now says she may have misidentified. But we’ve asked Netflix to just put a little note at the bottom quoting what she has said, and they refuse to do it.
1:09:41 So, if it’s on Netflix, don’t believe it. Somebody gave me a shirt the other day that said, “Was it on CNN or is it the truth?” Uh, I would now change that to, “Is it on Netflix or is it the truth?” You know, problem. You can’t avoid watching Netflix because it has some, you know, pretty good shows.
1:09:57 But when they do their own um uh documentaries, be very doubtful. It ain’t necessarily so.
1:10:04 Brian Rose: So, a amen to that. Would you ever do a movie about your life?
1:10:09 Alan Dershowitz: Well, somebody did. A Canadian broadcaster did one. It’s called The Trials of Alan Dershowitz, and it showed in film festivals and and stuff, and it’s pretty good. It uh you know, it’s critical, but it’s very accurate about who I am and what I’ve done and what my values are. So yeah, they’ve done that.
1:10:29 And of course there was an Oscar-winning movie called Reversal of Fortune, which my son um produced, and um which was widely watched, and it showed one part of my life, representing Claus von Bulow.
1:10:42 Brian Rose: Yeah, that’s when I first heard about you as a young boy. So um Alan, uh, keep fighting. You’re a legend. Uh, just appreciate everything you do, and looks like nothing’s slowing you down. So uh thanks so much for the input, and I look forward to having you back on again.
1:10:55 Alan Dershowitz: Thank you, because you’re a great interviewer. To really really get to the bottom of issues, and you give the interviewee an opportunity to express himself, and it’s great. So I anytime you want me back on your show, you got me.
1:11:07 Brian Rose: All right, you got it. Thank you, Alan. We appreciate you, and uh we’ll see you next time. Thanks, everybody, at London Real. Follow this man, and uh until then.
1:11:14 Alan Dershowitz: Bye-bye.
