September 5, 2025 • 21 mins
This week on The Sounds of Film, Tom Needham welcomes Alan Dershowitz—New York Times bestselling author and one of the most influential legal minds in America. Politico has described him as “one of the most prominent and consistent defenders of civil liberties in America,” while Newsweek has hailed him as “the nation’s most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer and one of its most distinguished defenders of individual rights.”
Dershowitz joins the show to discuss his latest book, Cancel Culture. In it, he explores the urgent debates surrounding free speech, due process, and fairness in public life. The book argues for careful judgment in deciding when, how, and whether to cancel, boycott, deplatform, or exclude—emphasizing the need for objective and principled standards.
While Dershowitz critiques the dangers of cancel culture—such as snap judgments, social media-driven punishment without due process, and applying today’s values to history—he also recognizes the intentions of those who see it as a tool for social change. He even acknowledges that cancellation itself can be viewed as a form of constitutionally protected expression.
For more information about The Sounds of Film, please visit soundsoffilm.com
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hi, this is Tom Needham and you're listening to the sounds
of film. And boy, I am so excited to have
on the phone with us today. Alan Dershowitz.
He's a Brooklyn native, a long time Harvard School professor,
law school professor, author of countless books.
He's been called one of the sharpest legal minds in history.
He also is the host of The DurstShow podcast, and he was the
(00:23):
writer and featured in the film Reversal of Fortune.
Alan, thank you so much for joining us today.
I want to talk to you about yournew book, Cancel Culture, the
latest attack on free speech anddue process.
Well, thanks for having me. It's really an important subject
because it doesn't reflect like the past of McCarthyism.
It reflects the future. There are so many young people,
(00:45):
people I know, former students, even some relatives who support
cancel culture, who say why do we need dissenting points of
view? We know the truth.
We know what's right. We know what's wrong.
Why do we need to process? If a woman accuses a man, well,
she must be telling the truth. We know men lie.
We know women don't lie. Why do we need to process?
(01:06):
Why do we need free speech? Why do we need any process?
Just put us in charge and we'll do what's best for the country.
If it sounds familiar, yeah, youheard it from Stalin, Mao, Paul
Pot Castro. It's a common, a common
denominator of, of authoritariantyrants.
Now, the hard thing is that these are good kids.
(01:26):
These are decent people who really want to do the right
thing. They're not like the people who
brought us McCarthyism, who brought us some of the other
tyrannical regimes. They're decent, good people.
They're our children, our grandchildren, our nephews, our
nieces. And they have been deceived into
believing that you can achieve justice without process.
It was Louis Brandeis who said the greatest dangerous to
(01:48):
liberty lie with good people, decent people, people with zeal,
well meaning but without understanding.
And that's what cancer culture is all about, how these folks
don't understand history and don't understand the threats
they're posing to basic liberty.You, you mentioned that this is
something that's widespread withyoung people.
(02:10):
You hear about it with the me too culture, but it's also
infected politics as well. You, you've supported a number
of unpopular clients through theyears.
Everyone from OJ Simpson to I guess some people would say he's
unpopular President Trump. I'm, I'm hearing from so many
different people though, that it's, it's, it's really
(02:30):
different this time that, that people who had normal positions
in the Trump White House or who have supported him in various
ways, that they're experiencing cancel culture in a way that has
never been seen before. Can you explain?
What's going on about that? Harvard University has a
petition going around. It started actually with a
(02:52):
petition against me individuallywhen I stood on the floor of the
Senate and opposed President Trump's impeachment because I
believe and still believe that it was based on unconstitutional
criteria. Abuse of power and obstruction
of Congress are not in the Constitution.
There was a petition to take away my emeritus professorship,
something I earned for 50 years of teaching and 10,000 students.
(03:14):
And I was among the most popularteachers in the law school.
And students still, you know, call me and tell me how
influential I was in their life.They wanted to take away my
emeritus professorship because they didn't want there to be any
association between Harvard and the Trump administration.
And they had a precedent for it.They might have prevailed if I
hadn't fought back. They had a precedent.
Harvard students managed to get the Dean of one of the colleges
(03:36):
fired because he represented Harvey Weinstein.
This was a a lawyer named Ron Sullivan, who, along with his
wife, were the first African American Deans of any College in
the history of Harvard. And they were fired, not for
anything they did, but because they he represented Harvey
Weinstein for a brief period of time.
And the students looked the administrators in the face and
(03:59):
lied through their teeth saying that they were fighting, they
were afraid, they were scared, they were put in fear.
They didn't feel safe in the presence of a lawyer.
This is the same lawyer who a year earlier had represented A
minority person who was accused of murdering two people in cold
blood as part of a gangland drugevent.
And the students didn't feel fear of that.
(04:20):
They didn't feel afraid. They didn't feel scared to have
the lawyer defending a murderer in their house.
But when it came to Harvey Weinstein, you know, that was
politically incorrect. So he got fired.
I haven't lost my emeritus professorship, but they're
trying to disbar Rudy Giuliani, and they're canceling.
I have some former students who worked in the White House, and
(04:41):
they say they can't get interviews.
They don't want to be hired. The people don't want to hire
them or have any association with them if they had anything
to do with the, the, the Trump administration.
And you know, it's pure McCarthyism to blame people for
their clients. Like I was victimized by it.
I represented Jeffrey Epstein. I wasn't his friend.
I certainly not after I found out what he had actually been
(05:05):
accused of. I did represent him when he was
accused of simply having underage sex with one or two
women who were 17 1/2 and showedhim a false I DS.
I did represent him at that point and then not only was I
cancelled as a result of it, butI became the victim of false
accusations by a woman I never met, never heard of.
(05:25):
She just made-up stories. Fortunately she had an e-mail
trail which we managed to uncover proving she never met me
and she admitted she never met me.
Her lawyer admitted she never met me.
Her best friend said she confessed to her that she was
pressured into falsely accusing me and nonetheless, people still
believe I must have done something wrong.
(05:45):
After all I've been accused. The 92nd St.
Y where I've been speaking for 25 years cancelled me saying
they know I'm innocent but I've been accused.
So if I'm accused, then obviously I I should be deemed
to be guilty, the new deputy director of the White House
Communications Office has publicly stated.
(06:07):
Or one of the deputy directors, I may not have the title right,
that any man who's been accused by a woman should not be able to
run for office. Now think about that.
This is a woman who's working for Joe Biden, who has been
accused of the improper sexual conduct.
Not only that, but this woman who Biden just appointed said
(06:28):
she believed the woman. In other words, she said she
believed that Joe Biden was a rapist that he had.
I don't want to describe what the allegations are, but they
would be rape if they were true.Of course they're not true.
Joe Biden would never do anything like that.
I've known him for 40 years. But none the less, here's a
(06:49):
woman who is in a high position of authority, who has stated
publicly that no man should run if he's been accused and is now
working for a man who she believed and has been accused.
Hypocrisy is just rampant. You know, you mentioned Mayor
Giuliani and of course, the big story in the news right now is
Trump challenging the election. And one, one of the things that
(07:13):
concerns me the most, whether one likes President Trump or not
is and, and this is something that Giuliani has spoken about,
and I'm sure you have as well, that there is a, a really
amazing amount of censorship that's going on.
They're, they're canceling the views of anyone right now who
wants to just look into what wasgoing on with this election.
(07:35):
And it's it's unbelievable. Can you talk to like the
seriousness of this situation where the mainstream media and
all these big tech companies have seen to like almost collude
and just say, like, we're just not even going to cover it.
We're not even going to give anycredence that there's even a
problem right now. Well, they shouldn't be covering
(07:55):
anything. If they have immunity under
Section 270 of the communications Code, they're not
supposed to be making decisions like that.
They're supposed to simply be a platform.
They will give an immunity because they had said they're
just a platform. They don't censor.
They don't make decisions. They don't like the New York
Times, they don't like publishers.
The New York Times doesn't have immunity.
(08:17):
If the New York Times publishes a story that I stole a billion
dollars from poor people, I would own the New York Times.
I could sue them for defamation.But if somebody says that on on
Twitter and they do it anonymously and I can't find
them, I can't sue Twitter because they have immunity.
(08:37):
But they can't have immunity if they're making decisions.
If they're saying some things goup, some things don't, some
things get warnings, other things don't, then they're
acting like the New York Times. So I think that's going to
change. There are hearings now in front
of Congress. There's a lot of movement to
amend that section of the communications law and make
(08:57):
platforms choose you want to getimmunity.
You have to be a real platform. If you want to be a publisher,
if you want to make decisions, if you want to flag things, if
you want to decide what to put on and what not to put on, then
you're not a platform, you're a publisher.
And if you're a publisher, you get to be sued.
One of the things I think that'sbeing kept from people that
(09:18):
aren't going to places where maybe you're being interviewed
is the idea that you and people like even Fareed Sakara have
expressed, which is that there is actually a constitutional
path for Trump to win. And if we can kind of just
switch gears for a second, I'm, I'm hearing things and, and
you're the expert that there aremaybe unlikely scenarios, but I,
(09:40):
I hear talk about encouraging legislators in the swing states
to vote their conscience, even though maybe the votes are not
there. The popular votes are not there
for them to vote the way maybe Trump would like, but they're
going to encourage them to recognize that there was fraud
(10:04):
in, in the election and that they should then therefore vote
differently. I've also heard suggestions that
there's lawsuits that we, we keep on hearing in the
mainstream media that, well, they're losing all these
lawsuits. But then I'll hear some people
say, well, that's OK because they they have to lose in order
to get to the Supreme Court. I don't know if that's exactly
(10:24):
accurate or not. But then I'm even hearing of
this one crazy scenario where ifenough doubt is presented and
the electors can come to an agreement that it could end up
in the House of Representatives.Can you address some of some of
these? Things or yeah, or theoretical
paths to victory, but none of them are practical.
(10:45):
Let's go over each of them very quickly.
If there's no majority in favor of one candidate.
If Biden gets 269 instead of 270, the election immediately
goes to the House, where Trump wins because he has more states
delegations than than Biden would have.
But that can't happen unless state legislatures or state
(11:10):
governors or state secretaries of state refused to certify or
change the certification from Biden to Trump.
For that to happen, you'd need the perfect storm.
You'd need to win judicial decisions, and the votes would
have to be there. Take Pennsylvania.
They have an airtight case that they will win in the Supreme
Court. The airtight case is this.
(11:30):
The legislature said you can't count ballots received after
Election Day, right, In ballots.The court said, no, no, no, no,
no. We're going to let you count the
three days after that. The Constitution says the
legislature makes those determinations, not the court.
Justice Alito has already said you have to set aside all the
votes that came in like that's awinner in the Supreme Court.
(11:50):
The problem is the numbers aren't there.
Even if there are 20 or 30,000 of those votes that have been
sequestered. Biden wins Pennsylvania by
80,000 votes. So it's a pyrrhic victory, a
moot victory. And I think that's true.
Most of the other claims that are being made, it may get to
the Supreme Court. But the first question the
justices will ask the lawyers are, can you tell us that it
(12:13):
would make a difference if we ruled in your favor?
And I think it's going to be hard to come up with the numbers
that would justify that. Scott Adams recently wondered
out loud whether it was possiblethat if if a case goes to the
Supreme Court, that there might be enough evidence to win a
(12:34):
case. But that even with a number of
conservatives on the court, there might be such a concern
that ruling in favor of Trump would cause such chaos in the
country that the judges might just rule for maintaining, you
(12:54):
know, the the sanctity of the nation.
Is that something that judges even consider in your
experience? Or judges.
Judges are human beings like like the rest of us.
Of course they consider it. When desegregation was ordered,
Supreme Court waited till they had a nine to nothing opinion so
that they could persuade Americathat this was not something that
(13:15):
reasonable people to disagree about.
Yeah, the justices would take that into consideration.
It would have to be a clear and overwhelming case that they
could justify which versus goal was different because no one had
been declared the winner. So they didn't reverse an
election. They just stopped the recount
and that gave the election over to to Bush.
But it would be very different here when all the networks have
(13:36):
cleared and many states have certified.
So the likelihood that the Supreme Court would ever do that
is near 0. They'd have to be an
overwhelming case. Get getting back to your book
cancel culture. I think one of the reasons why
there were so many people who were so outraged by President
Trump was due to the fact that they believed a lot of the
(13:58):
stories of him being a racist. Even though like that story
about fine people on both sides was debunked or the kids in
cages story that was also debunked because that that was a
program that was going on. I think even when Biden and
Obama were president, but but nevertheless, this kind of stuff
(14:20):
sticks. Isn't that the problem?
Are we going to see more of thisin politics where people are
just called? Racist.
Much more of it in politics and academia.
We are weaponizing. We are giving people weapons.
We're giving women weapons to destroy the life of men, no
matter how high they are, no matter what positions.
They are simply about making close accusation.
(14:41):
And the worst thing is prosecutors do not prosecute
women for making false accusations.
In my case, for example, the woman has sworn underoath that
she saw Bill Clinton twice having dinner with underage
girls on Jeffrey Epstein's island.
We retained the former head of the FBI to do a thorough
investigation. He checked Freedom of
(15:02):
Information. He checked the police in the
Virgin Islands. Bill Clinton never set foot on
that island. She committed perjury about Bill
Clinton. She committed perjury about Al
Gore. Obviously, she committed perjury
about me, and no prosecutor willtouch that case.
They will allow her to get away with murder.
She's earning millions and millions of dollars through her
(15:23):
lives, and she's going to get away with it.
And it will just encourage otherwomen to come forward, men too,
who have no morals to come forward and just accuse people.
And I have a friend who's a lawyer in Los Angeles.
She says she writes checks everyweek on behalf of famous
Hollywood people who have been accused, who didn't even know
(15:45):
the people. But they say, you know, write
100 grand, check. I don't want to have this in the
newspapers. I'll never be able to disprove
it. If she'll go away for 100 grand,
give her 100 grand. I make more money than that, you
know, in in one scene of a movie.
So it's become an extortionate racket.
You know, it was Eric Hoffa who once said something that's very
true of the Me Too movement. What he said was all causes
(16:06):
start as movements, then they become businesses and ultimately
rackets. We're now at a point where the
Me Too movement is becoming a racket for some people, for some
lawyers, and I can name you the lawyers.
There are lawyers who have started whole practices just
extorting innocent people. There was a big New York Times
(16:27):
story about how David Boies and another guy, another lawyer,
were going to find photographs of men.
They were fake photographs, but find photographs of men in
compromising positions and then go to them and say the only way
these pictures will not get released is if you hire us to be
your lawyers. You know, we're seeking criminal
(16:52):
indictments against the lawyers who did that.
And in my opinion, David Boies want to be investigated and
prosecuted for possible extortion for that episode.
And there are many other episodes of his life which
warrant that. He and I are in battling
lawsuits, and I will approve allof this at trial.
But the worst thing is when lawyers encourage women to make
(17:16):
up stories for money and they get away with it, you know, they
get away with it. They get the money.
Nobody exposes them. The women, even if they're found
to have committed perjury, don'tget prosecuted.
This Prosecutors are terrified that they will be attacked by
the V2 movement. And so we're in a situation now
which makes McCarthyism look like child play.
(17:37):
And what do you say to people who say, OK, the the cases that
you give are obviously wrong, but there was a a great
injustice that was going on for for many, many years in terms.
Of I agree with them, I agree with them.
Let's focus on the injustices. But there is no 'cause that
doesn't get distorted by money hungry, unethical people who
(18:00):
clearly are in it just for the money and are prepared to
falsely accused in order to be on the back of a good movement.
The Me Too movement is a good movement.
I support it. It exposed a lot of real
predatory conduct by men, but italso generated false
accusations. And so we have to set up a
process. I've actually called for the
(18:21):
creation of a Me Too court whereanybody accused can go to court.
You know, an informal court, say, several former judges or
justices, and they could presenttheir case and let the other
side present their case in one day and then let the informal
court decide whether there was any basis to it.
I would be the first litigant inthat court because I can prove
conclusively that I never met the woman who accused me and
(18:44):
that she just made-up a whole story about me.
And I have her emails and her address of a book in which she
wrote about her sex life and proves conclusively that she
admits she never met me. So, Alan, are you saying
basically that these are important allegations sometimes
that people are making, but thatthey should be treated in a, in
(19:04):
a legal sense, the way most crimes are committed?
And treated. And if people are found to have
made false accusations, they ought to be prosecuted.
You know, even the Bible says one of the 10 commandments that
shall not bear false witness. And under biblical law, if you
accuse somebody of a crime and it was false, you got the
punishment that the person wouldhave gotten had he been guilty.
(19:27):
And that's what I want the lawyer to hear.
I want women and their lawyers who make false accusations,
deliberate false accusations, willful sitting down and doing
the Hamlet thing, to be or not to be a false accuser.
If they do that jail, disbarment, that's the
consequence they ought to suffer.
I know we don't have any more time, but if I could just ask
(19:47):
you one last question. Through the years, you have
supported Julian Assange, right?And you've also been critical of
him at different points. But the Trump presidency may be
coming to a close. And and there are some people
that are hoping that he might, you know, let, let let him go.
(20:08):
OK. Do do you think that he should
be pardoned or not? I.
Think he has a strong case? He's not.
He's not Manning and he's not Snowden.
Manny Snowden stole the material.
Assange just published the material.
Assange is closer to the New York Times and the Washington
Post than he is to Snowden and and and Manning.
(20:30):
So I think there is a case for him to be pardoned and to be
allowed to come back to the United States and live as a free
man. He's basically been in prison
for the last several years. And, you know, he's done some
good things and some not so goodthings.
I am not necessarily a big supporter of WikiLeaks, but I
don't generally support what my clients have done in their
(20:51):
lives. I'm their lawyer.
It's like their doctor. When you're a doctor for a
cancer patient, they don't ask you.
Well, what do you think of his business practices?
You're his doctor and I'm his lawyer.
I have to focus on what the legal issues in the case are.
We've been speaking with Alan Dershowitz.
He's the author of Cancel Culture, the latest Attack on
Free Speech and Due Process, andthe host of The Durst Show
(21:13):
podcast. Alan, I want to thank you so
much for coming on The Sounds ofFilm.
Pleasure. Great questions, Great
questions, great show. OK.
Thank you very much. Take it easy.
Sure. Bye bye.
Hi, this is Tom Needham and you're listening to the sounds
of film. And boy, I am so excited to have
on the phone with us today. Alan Dershowitz.
He's a Brooklyn native, a long time Harvard School professor,
law school professor, author of countless books.
He's been called one of the sharpest legal minds in history.
He also is the host of The DurstShow podcast, and he was the
(00:23):
writer and featured in the film Reversal of Fortune.
Alan, thank you so much for joining us today.
I want to talk to you about yournew book, Cancel Culture, the
latest attack on free speech anddue process.
Well, thanks for having me. It's really an important subject
because it doesn't reflect like the past of McCarthyism.
It reflects the future. There are so many young people,
(00:45):
people I know, former students, even some relatives who support
cancel culture, who say why do we need dissenting points of
view? We know the truth.
We know what's right. We know what's wrong.
Why do we need to process? If a woman accuses a man, well,
she must be telling the truth. We know men lie.
We know women don't lie. Why do we need to process?
(01:06):
Why do we need free speech? Why do we need any process?
Just put us in charge and we'll do what's best for the country.
If it sounds familiar, yeah, youheard it from Stalin, Mao, Paul
Pot Castro. It's a common, a common
denominator of, of authoritariantyrants.
Now, the hard thing is that these are good kids.
(01:26):
These are decent people who really want to do the right
thing. They're not like the people who
brought us McCarthyism, who brought us some of the other
tyrannical regimes. They're decent, good people.
They're our children, our grandchildren, our nephews, our
nieces. And they have been deceived into
believing that you can achieve justice without process.
It was Louis Brandeis who said the greatest dangerous to
(01:48):
liberty lie with good people, decent people, people with zeal,
well meaning but without understanding.
And that's what cancer culture is all about, how these folks
don't understand history and don't understand the threats
they're posing to basic liberty.You, you mentioned that this is
something that's widespread withyoung people.
(02:10):
You hear about it with the me too culture, but it's also
infected politics as well. You, you've supported a number
of unpopular clients through theyears.
Everyone from OJ Simpson to I guess some people would say he's
unpopular President Trump. I'm, I'm hearing from so many
different people though, that it's, it's, it's really
(02:30):
different this time that, that people who had normal positions
in the Trump White House or who have supported him in various
ways, that they're experiencing cancel culture in a way that has
never been seen before. Can you explain?
What's going on about that? Harvard University has a
petition going around. It started actually with a
(02:52):
petition against me individuallywhen I stood on the floor of the
Senate and opposed President Trump's impeachment because I
believe and still believe that it was based on unconstitutional
criteria. Abuse of power and obstruction
of Congress are not in the Constitution.
There was a petition to take away my emeritus professorship,
something I earned for 50 years of teaching and 10,000 students.
(03:14):
And I was among the most popularteachers in the law school.
And students still, you know, call me and tell me how
influential I was in their life.They wanted to take away my
emeritus professorship because they didn't want there to be any
association between Harvard and the Trump administration.
And they had a precedent for it.They might have prevailed if I
hadn't fought back. They had a precedent.
Harvard students managed to get the Dean of one of the colleges
(03:36):
fired because he represented Harvey Weinstein.
This was a a lawyer named Ron Sullivan, who, along with his
wife, were the first African American Deans of any College in
the history of Harvard. And they were fired, not for
anything they did, but because they he represented Harvey
Weinstein for a brief period of time.
And the students looked the administrators in the face and
(03:59):
lied through their teeth saying that they were fighting, they
were afraid, they were scared, they were put in fear.
They didn't feel safe in the presence of a lawyer.
This is the same lawyer who a year earlier had represented A
minority person who was accused of murdering two people in cold
blood as part of a gangland drugevent.
And the students didn't feel fear of that.
(04:20):
They didn't feel afraid. They didn't feel scared to have
the lawyer defending a murderer in their house.
But when it came to Harvey Weinstein, you know, that was
politically incorrect. So he got fired.
I haven't lost my emeritus professorship, but they're
trying to disbar Rudy Giuliani, and they're canceling.
I have some former students who worked in the White House, and
(04:41):
they say they can't get interviews.
They don't want to be hired. The people don't want to hire
them or have any association with them if they had anything
to do with the, the, the Trump administration.
And you know, it's pure McCarthyism to blame people for
their clients. Like I was victimized by it.
I represented Jeffrey Epstein. I wasn't his friend.
I certainly not after I found out what he had actually been
(05:05):
accused of. I did represent him when he was
accused of simply having underage sex with one or two
women who were 17 1/2 and showedhim a false I DS.
I did represent him at that point and then not only was I
cancelled as a result of it, butI became the victim of false
accusations by a woman I never met, never heard of.
(05:25):
She just made-up stories. Fortunately she had an e-mail
trail which we managed to uncover proving she never met me
and she admitted she never met me.
Her lawyer admitted she never met me.
Her best friend said she confessed to her that she was
pressured into falsely accusing me and nonetheless, people still
believe I must have done something wrong.
(05:45):
After all I've been accused. The 92nd St.
Y where I've been speaking for 25 years cancelled me saying
they know I'm innocent but I've been accused.
So if I'm accused, then obviously I I should be deemed
to be guilty, the new deputy director of the White House
Communications Office has publicly stated.
(06:07):
Or one of the deputy directors, I may not have the title right,
that any man who's been accused by a woman should not be able to
run for office. Now think about that.
This is a woman who's working for Joe Biden, who has been
accused of the improper sexual conduct.
Not only that, but this woman who Biden just appointed said
(06:28):
she believed the woman. In other words, she said she
believed that Joe Biden was a rapist that he had.
I don't want to describe what the allegations are, but they
would be rape if they were true.Of course they're not true.
Joe Biden would never do anything like that.
I've known him for 40 years. But none the less, here's a
(06:49):
woman who is in a high position of authority, who has stated
publicly that no man should run if he's been accused and is now
working for a man who she believed and has been accused.
Hypocrisy is just rampant. You know, you mentioned Mayor
Giuliani and of course, the big story in the news right now is
Trump challenging the election. And one, one of the things that
(07:13):
concerns me the most, whether one likes President Trump or not
is and, and this is something that Giuliani has spoken about,
and I'm sure you have as well, that there is a, a really
amazing amount of censorship that's going on.
They're, they're canceling the views of anyone right now who
wants to just look into what wasgoing on with this election.
(07:35):
And it's it's unbelievable. Can you talk to like the
seriousness of this situation where the mainstream media and
all these big tech companies have seen to like almost collude
and just say, like, we're just not even going to cover it.
We're not even going to give anycredence that there's even a
problem right now. Well, they shouldn't be covering
(07:55):
anything. If they have immunity under
Section 270 of the communications Code, they're not
supposed to be making decisions like that.
They're supposed to simply be a platform.
They will give an immunity because they had said they're
just a platform. They don't censor.
They don't make decisions. They don't like the New York
Times, they don't like publishers.
The New York Times doesn't have immunity.
(08:17):
If the New York Times publishes a story that I stole a billion
dollars from poor people, I would own the New York Times.
I could sue them for defamation.But if somebody says that on on
Twitter and they do it anonymously and I can't find
them, I can't sue Twitter because they have immunity.
(08:37):
But they can't have immunity if they're making decisions.
If they're saying some things goup, some things don't, some
things get warnings, other things don't, then they're
acting like the New York Times. So I think that's going to
change. There are hearings now in front
of Congress. There's a lot of movement to
amend that section of the communications law and make
(08:57):
platforms choose you want to getimmunity.
You have to be a real platform. If you want to be a publisher,
if you want to make decisions, if you want to flag things, if
you want to decide what to put on and what not to put on, then
you're not a platform, you're a publisher.
And if you're a publisher, you get to be sued.
One of the things I think that'sbeing kept from people that
(09:18):
aren't going to places where maybe you're being interviewed
is the idea that you and people like even Fareed Sakara have
expressed, which is that there is actually a constitutional
path for Trump to win. And if we can kind of just
switch gears for a second, I'm, I'm hearing things and, and
you're the expert that there aremaybe unlikely scenarios, but I,
(09:40):
I hear talk about encouraging legislators in the swing states
to vote their conscience, even though maybe the votes are not
there. The popular votes are not there
for them to vote the way maybe Trump would like, but they're
going to encourage them to recognize that there was fraud
(10:04):
in, in the election and that they should then therefore vote
differently. I've also heard suggestions that
there's lawsuits that we, we keep on hearing in the
mainstream media that, well, they're losing all these
lawsuits. But then I'll hear some people
say, well, that's OK because they they have to lose in order
to get to the Supreme Court. I don't know if that's exactly
(10:24):
accurate or not. But then I'm even hearing of
this one crazy scenario where ifenough doubt is presented and
the electors can come to an agreement that it could end up
in the House of Representatives.Can you address some of some of
these? Things or yeah, or theoretical
paths to victory, but none of them are practical.
(10:45):
Let's go over each of them very quickly.
If there's no majority in favor of one candidate.
If Biden gets 269 instead of 270, the election immediately
goes to the House, where Trump wins because he has more states
delegations than than Biden would have.
But that can't happen unless state legislatures or state
(11:10):
governors or state secretaries of state refused to certify or
change the certification from Biden to Trump.
For that to happen, you'd need the perfect storm.
You'd need to win judicial decisions, and the votes would
have to be there. Take Pennsylvania.
They have an airtight case that they will win in the Supreme
Court. The airtight case is this.
(11:30):
The legislature said you can't count ballots received after
Election Day, right, In ballots.The court said, no, no, no, no,
no. We're going to let you count the
three days after that. The Constitution says the
legislature makes those determinations, not the court.
Justice Alito has already said you have to set aside all the
votes that came in like that's awinner in the Supreme Court.
(11:50):
The problem is the numbers aren't there.
Even if there are 20 or 30,000 of those votes that have been
sequestered. Biden wins Pennsylvania by
80,000 votes. So it's a pyrrhic victory, a
moot victory. And I think that's true.
Most of the other claims that are being made, it may get to
the Supreme Court. But the first question the
justices will ask the lawyers are, can you tell us that it
(12:13):
would make a difference if we ruled in your favor?
And I think it's going to be hard to come up with the numbers
that would justify that. Scott Adams recently wondered
out loud whether it was possiblethat if if a case goes to the
Supreme Court, that there might be enough evidence to win a
(12:34):
case. But that even with a number of
conservatives on the court, there might be such a concern
that ruling in favor of Trump would cause such chaos in the
country that the judges might just rule for maintaining, you
(12:54):
know, the the sanctity of the nation.
Is that something that judges even consider in your
experience? Or judges.
Judges are human beings like like the rest of us.
Of course they consider it. When desegregation was ordered,
Supreme Court waited till they had a nine to nothing opinion so
that they could persuade Americathat this was not something that
(13:15):
reasonable people to disagree about.
Yeah, the justices would take that into consideration.
It would have to be a clear and overwhelming case that they
could justify which versus goal was different because no one had
been declared the winner. So they didn't reverse an
election. They just stopped the recount
and that gave the election over to to Bush.
But it would be very different here when all the networks have
(13:36):
cleared and many states have certified.
So the likelihood that the Supreme Court would ever do that
is near 0. They'd have to be an
overwhelming case. Get getting back to your book
cancel culture. I think one of the reasons why
there were so many people who were so outraged by President
Trump was due to the fact that they believed a lot of the
(13:58):
stories of him being a racist. Even though like that story
about fine people on both sides was debunked or the kids in
cages story that was also debunked because that that was a
program that was going on. I think even when Biden and
Obama were president, but but nevertheless, this kind of stuff
(14:20):
sticks. Isn't that the problem?
Are we going to see more of thisin politics where people are
just called? Racist.
Much more of it in politics and academia.
We are weaponizing. We are giving people weapons.
We're giving women weapons to destroy the life of men, no
matter how high they are, no matter what positions.
They are simply about making close accusation.
(14:41):
And the worst thing is prosecutors do not prosecute
women for making false accusations.
In my case, for example, the woman has sworn underoath that
she saw Bill Clinton twice having dinner with underage
girls on Jeffrey Epstein's island.
We retained the former head of the FBI to do a thorough
investigation. He checked Freedom of
(15:02):
Information. He checked the police in the
Virgin Islands. Bill Clinton never set foot on
that island. She committed perjury about Bill
Clinton. She committed perjury about Al
Gore. Obviously, she committed perjury
about me, and no prosecutor willtouch that case.
They will allow her to get away with murder.
She's earning millions and millions of dollars through her
(15:23):
lives, and she's going to get away with it.
And it will just encourage otherwomen to come forward, men too,
who have no morals to come forward and just accuse people.
And I have a friend who's a lawyer in Los Angeles.
She says she writes checks everyweek on behalf of famous
Hollywood people who have been accused, who didn't even know
(15:45):
the people. But they say, you know, write
100 grand, check. I don't want to have this in the
newspapers. I'll never be able to disprove
it. If she'll go away for 100 grand,
give her 100 grand. I make more money than that, you
know, in in one scene of a movie.
So it's become an extortionate racket.
You know, it was Eric Hoffa who once said something that's very
true of the Me Too movement. What he said was all causes
(16:06):
start as movements, then they become businesses and ultimately
rackets. We're now at a point where the
Me Too movement is becoming a racket for some people, for some
lawyers, and I can name you the lawyers.
There are lawyers who have started whole practices just
extorting innocent people. There was a big New York Times
(16:27):
story about how David Boies and another guy, another lawyer,
were going to find photographs of men.
They were fake photographs, but find photographs of men in
compromising positions and then go to them and say the only way
these pictures will not get released is if you hire us to be
your lawyers. You know, we're seeking criminal
(16:52):
indictments against the lawyers who did that.
And in my opinion, David Boies want to be investigated and
prosecuted for possible extortion for that episode.
And there are many other episodes of his life which
warrant that. He and I are in battling
lawsuits, and I will approve allof this at trial.
But the worst thing is when lawyers encourage women to make
(17:16):
up stories for money and they get away with it, you know, they
get away with it. They get the money.
Nobody exposes them. The women, even if they're found
to have committed perjury, don'tget prosecuted.
This Prosecutors are terrified that they will be attacked by
the V2 movement. And so we're in a situation now
which makes McCarthyism look like child play.
(17:37):
And what do you say to people who say, OK, the the cases that
you give are obviously wrong, but there was a a great
injustice that was going on for for many, many years in terms.
Of I agree with them, I agree with them.
Let's focus on the injustices. But there is no 'cause that
doesn't get distorted by money hungry, unethical people who
(18:00):
clearly are in it just for the money and are prepared to
falsely accused in order to be on the back of a good movement.
The Me Too movement is a good movement.
I support it. It exposed a lot of real
predatory conduct by men, but italso generated false
accusations. And so we have to set up a
process. I've actually called for the
(18:21):
creation of a Me Too court whereanybody accused can go to court.
You know, an informal court, say, several former judges or
justices, and they could presenttheir case and let the other
side present their case in one day and then let the informal
court decide whether there was any basis to it.
I would be the first litigant inthat court because I can prove
conclusively that I never met the woman who accused me and
(18:44):
that she just made-up a whole story about me.
And I have her emails and her address of a book in which she
wrote about her sex life and proves conclusively that she
admits she never met me. So, Alan, are you saying
basically that these are important allegations sometimes
that people are making, but thatthey should be treated in a, in
(19:04):
a legal sense, the way most crimes are committed?
And treated. And if people are found to have
made false accusations, they ought to be prosecuted.
You know, even the Bible says one of the 10 commandments that
shall not bear false witness. And under biblical law, if you
accuse somebody of a crime and it was false, you got the
punishment that the person wouldhave gotten had he been guilty.
(19:27):
And that's what I want the lawyer to hear.
I want women and their lawyers who make false accusations,
deliberate false accusations, willful sitting down and doing
the Hamlet thing, to be or not to be a false accuser.
If they do that jail, disbarment, that's the
consequence they ought to suffer.
I know we don't have any more time, but if I could just ask
(19:47):
you one last question. Through the years, you have
supported Julian Assange, right?And you've also been critical of
him at different points. But the Trump presidency may be
coming to a close. And and there are some people
that are hoping that he might, you know, let, let let him go.
(20:08):
OK. Do do you think that he should
be pardoned or not? I.
Think he has a strong case? He's not.
He's not Manning and he's not Snowden.
Manny Snowden stole the material.
Assange just published the material.
Assange is closer to the New York Times and the Washington
Post than he is to Snowden and and and Manning.
(20:30):
So I think there is a case for him to be pardoned and to be
allowed to come back to the United States and live as a free
man. He's basically been in prison
for the last several years. And, you know, he's done some
good things and some not so goodthings.
I am not necessarily a big supporter of WikiLeaks, but I
don't generally support what my clients have done in their
(20:51):
lives. I'm their lawyer.
It's like their doctor. When you're a doctor for a
cancer patient, they don't ask you.
Well, what do you think of his business practices?
You're his doctor and I'm his lawyer.
I have to focus on what the legal issues in the case are.
We've been speaking with Alan Dershowitz.
He's the author of Cancel Culture, the latest Attack on
Free Speech and Due Process, andthe host of The Durst Show
(21:13):
podcast. Alan, I want to thank you so
much for coming on The Sounds ofFilm.
Pleasure. Great questions, Great
questions, great show. OK.
Thank you very much. Take it easy.
Sure. Bye bye.
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