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Dershowitz: Al Gore, his legal team and I tried to find uncounted presidential votes, lobbied officials and fought in courts in 2000

August 17, 2023 | | Print Article

Legal scholar Alan Dershowitz has alleged that what former President Donald Trump’s been accused of doing in the latest indictment against him is no different than what then-presidential candidate Al Gore tried to do in 2000.

Writing for the Daily Mail, he explained that “electoral challenges have long been part of American history” but are “only now … being criminalized”  because of the name of the man currently involved: Donald J. Trump.

“I was one of the lawyers involved in objections to Florida’s presidential vote in 2000. A margin of less than 600 ballots determined that Governor George W. Bush rather than Vice President Al Gore won the state and, thus, the electoral college vote,” he wrote.

“I was convinced then and I am convinced now that this result was wrong. No one was indicted, disbarred, disciplined or even much criticized for those efforts,” he added.

Conversely, Trump and 18 other defendants — including his legal team — have been charged with a myriad of crimes, including election fraud, conspiracy, racketeering and more.

Yet what Gore and his legal team, including Dershowitz, did decades ago was no different than what Trump and his legal  team did in 2020.

“I represented the voters of Palm Beach County, many of whom voted by mistake for Pat Buchanan rather than Gore because of the infamous butterfly ballots and hanging chads that prevented their votes from being accurately counted,” Dershowitz explained.

“During the course of our challenges, many tactics similar to those employed in 2020 were attempted. Lawyers wrote legal memoranda outlining possible courses of conduct, including proposing a slate of alternate electors, who would deliver our preferred election results to Congress,” he continued.

Meanwhile, Trump and his own attorneys are facing years in prison for drafting their own list of alternate electors, as well as for searching for votes.

“This new indictment features Trump’s phone call with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, which was captured in an audio recording. In the conversation, Trump asks Raffensperger to ‘find’ 12,000 votes,” according to Dershowitz.

The irony is that, in his mind, this particular fact “is among the most exculpatory pieces of evidence.” Why? Because “Trump was entitled as a candidate to ask a Georgia state official to locate votes that he believes were not counted.”

Trump was also entitled to “influence” officials into performing a recount.

“In 2000, attempts were made to influence various Florida officials to recount the votes. Now, the former president’s request that Georgia’s Republican Speaker of the House reconsider the count is being charged as soliciting a public official to violate his oath. But if similar behavior was legal in 2000, how could it be illegal in 2023?” Dershowitz wrote.

None of this is to say that the legal challenges made in 2000 changed the outcome of the election. Indeed, the Supreme Court ultimately ruled at the time against Gore, thereby handing the election victory to George W. Bush.

Afterward, Dershowitz penned a book critical of the high court’s decision.

“I wrote a book entitled Supreme Injustice, condemning the Supreme Court’s decision and insisting that the election had been stolen from Gore and improperly handed to the candidate who received fewer votes,” he explained.

“The book was a bestseller, featured in front page reviews in the New York Times and other major publications. Most Americans thought that those challenging the Florida vote had acted in good faith, even though the courts ruled against them,” he added.

So what’s different now? Namely that “many observers do not believe that Trump and his advisors were sincere when they declared that he had won the election.” But according to Dershowitz, how they feel shouldn’t matter.

Dovetailing back to Trump’s indictment, Dershowitz noted that the key to it is “the allegation that Trump was lying in order to corruptly prevent the inauguration of the candidate who won the election fair and square.”

There’s just one problem with this allegation.

“Conspiracy and RICO violations are specific ‘intent’ crimes. In order to secure a conviction, prosecutors must prove a personalized agreement to join a criminal activity. That will be an incredibly difficult case to make, especially regarding Trump himself who — to my knowledge – has never wavered from his belief that the election was stolen,” Dershowitz explained.

Exactly. Trump genuinely believes the 2020 election was stolen, and unless prosecutors can definitely prove otherwise, their case against him may be doomed …

Vivek Saxena
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