Jeffrey Toobin Goes After Alan Dershowitz On CNN: ‘What Happened To You?’

Jeffrey Toobin and Alan Dershowitz Image by Forward Montage

By Ari Feldman March 22, 2018

Legal expert Jeffrey Toobin clashed with his former law professor, Alan Dershowitz, during Anderson Cooper’s CNN show Wednesday evening. Dershowitz is a famous defense attorney who taught Toobin as a professor at Harvard University’s law school.

Their tense exchange came as they were both discussing the legal necessity of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s contacts with the Trump campaign. Dershowitz has repeatedly decried the investigation, saying he would have preferred a bipartisan commission.

“How has this come about that, in every situation over the past year, you have been carrying water for Donald Trump?” Toobin said to Dershowitz. “This is not who you used to be, and you are doing this over and over again in situations that are just obviously rife with conflict of interest. And it’s just, like, what’s happened to you?”

It wasn’t the first time the two, who have been close for many years, have clashed. Last June, during a panel discussion, they also disagreed after Dershowitz argued that the president cannot legally obstruct justice. Dershowitz told the Washington Post in December that his views about Trump have made him something of a leper in the Harvard community.

“None of my liberal friends invite me to dinner anymore,” Dershowitz said. “Thanks to Donald Trump, I’ve lost seven pounds. I call it the Donald Trump diet.”

Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter @aefeldman

Ari Feldman is a staff writer at the Forward. He covers Jewish religious organizations, synagogue life, anti-Semitism and the Orthodox world. If you have any tips, you can email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @aefeldman.

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