Dershowitz: DOJ Can't Use Mar-a-Lago Evidence if FBI Raid Improper

Harvard Law School professor emeritus and noted criminal defense attorney Alan Dershowitz said Monday evening that the evidence seized by the FBI in a raid on former President Donald Trump’s home would be ruled out if the raid were improper.

After telling Newsmax the FBI raid appeared to be “misconduct,” absent further evidence, Dershowitz went on to explain:

I just hope this raid has a justification. If it doesn’t have a justification, the material seized in it will be suppressed. … The law is clear: you don’t engage in a raid unless you’ve exhausted all of the other remedies. … Raids are not a first recourse in America. They’re a last recourse. And so the government will have to show a court, eventually, that they exhausted all other possibilities or they had a reasonable basis for believing that the evidence would be destroyed if it was sought in the normal legal course of events, through subpoena.

Federal courts follow the exclusionary rule in criminal prosecutions, which is that evidence seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment must usually be excluded from a prosecution, even if it implicates the defendant in a crime. The FBI obtained a search warrant, whose validity is presumed, but which may, Dershowitz suggested, have been obtained on an improper basis.... (Read more)

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