Alan Dershowitz on Kavanaugh investigation: “This kind of sexual McCarthyism is a terrible, terrible precedent”

From the October 5 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:

Video file

ALAN DERSHOWITZ (HARVARD LAW PROFESSOR): I think the phoniest argument is that they didn't interview her. She was under oath, she testified. 

AINSLEY EARHARDT (CO-HOST): For hours.

DERSHOWITZ: FBI background checks don't repeat what has happened previously. The two people who they didn't have to interview were the people who testified. Their job was to find corroboration or lack of corroboration. If she has additional witnesses she should have them putting out statements, sworn statements under oath. Then we can evaluate those. But, right now, I think the argument that she wasn't interviewed is an absurd one. What would she do, change her testimony? She cannot help herself. She can only hurt herself if she changed testimony. 

PETE HEGSETH (GUEST CO-HOST): So was it an earnest attempt at the facts or an earnest attempt to delay?

DERSHOWITZ: Earnest attempt to delay, a serious earnest attempt to delay. 

BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): Two scenarios: One, he passes, what happens? And one, he doesn't, what happens? 

DERSHOWITZ: Well, I have no idea what impact it's going to have on election. I know one thing, that the idea --

KILMEADE: Does it change the court? 

DERSHOWITZ: It changes the court, but it changes the court less than if he doesn't get confirmed and President Trump appoints somebody even further to the right. That's not what this is about. The court will be changed. That's the reality of a presidential election. The question is now all about whether we allow a nominee to be discredited without hard proof, hard evidence, and whether or not this establishes as a precedent for the future where nobody is going to want to serve on the bench. The idea that he can't teach at Harvard now because he was suspected? When I was growing up in Brooklyn College as a student, they fired professors because they were suspected of maybe being communists when they were in their 20‘s. Suspicion was enough. This kind of sexual McCarthyism is a terrible, terrible precedent. Look, women being assaulted is a horrible, horrible thing, but women making up stories the way at least one witness may well have made up a story out of whole cloth, that's a serious matter too, and we have to look into all of these issues. This is a teaching moment and I hope we learn the right thing from this teaching moment. 

Previously

Fox panel: The Constitution “is quite clearly being ignored” because Kavanaugh might not be able to cross-examine Christine Blasey Ford

Fox News host compares Kavanaugh to Jesus Christ and investigation to the crucifixion 

Tucker Carlson guest Joe diGenova: The Democrats sound like the “cries of an injured child, not unlike those of Ms. Ford”