Recent developments in the case filed against former President Donald Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. The federal government indicted Trump last month for managing classified documents at his Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago.

The NYPost reported that Bragg’s case against Trump has likely been placed on pause because the federal case is more significant.

As the presidential election of 2024 approaches, however, renowned counsel and Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz criticizes the apparently endless investigations into Trump.

“What I worry about is if it becomes Turkey, or it becomes Iran, or it becomes a country where a suspicion is equivalent to conviction of guilt on one side of the political spectrum, rather than the other. But the key is, you have to have one system and one standard of law enforcement,” Dershowitz said.

“If there is a certain level of evidence of serious crime against anybody on either side — whether it’s the sitting president, the son of the sitting president, the former president, the same rule has to be applicable to all of them,” he continued. “The Justice Department cannot be allowed to use its enormous power of the criminal justice system to influence political elections.”

“He’s not acting like most criminal defendants,” Dershowitz said of Trump’s vehement response to rumors of his indictment. “Most of them stay quiet. And that’s why he’s gotten in trouble, but he’s exercising his constitutional rights, not only under the First Amendment, but under the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, and the Sixth Amendment.”

“He didn’t just simply roll over when prosecutors said, ‘We think you’re in trouble over possession of classified material.’ He fought back. And you’re allowed to do that,” Dershowitz noted, who also referenced Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s campaign promise to investigate Trump.

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Dershowitz is concerned that Bragg’s office is attempting to “keep secret” certain aspects of his case against Trump, as stated by Dershowitz.

Dershowitz stated in May that he believed Bragg’s lawsuit against Trump could result in Trump’s suspension from the bar.

While Dershowitz does not share Trump’s political beliefs, he told DW’s Tim Sebastian that the indictment submitted against the former president by Bragg is “absurd and politically motivated.”

Given that judges and prosecutors in New York are elected, Dershowitz argued that Trump will not receive a “fair trial in Manhattan” and that they all likely incline left politically.

Dershowitz continued by stating that if Bragg summons former Trump attorney Michael Cohen as a witness in the December trial, things could become difficult for him.

“I don’t think an indictment can actually come forward now after the comments made by [Robert] Costello,” the attorney said.

He said that “he has proved that the main witness is going to be a perjuring liar on the witness stand, and that puts the district attorney in a terrible position.”

“If he uses Cohen as a witness, he could actually lose his bar license. It’s unethical to put a witness on the stand who you know is lying, and he has to know that Cohen will be lying. Or he tries the case without Cohen, which would be very difficult, or he does the right thing: he drops the case,” Dershowitz said.

In a previous interview, Dershowitz indicated that Bragg could face up to five years in prison if he is found culpable of disclosing information about Trump’s indictment to the media.

In New York, leaking grand jury testimony is a Class E felony punishable by one to five years in prison.

Dershowitz also stated in an opinion article that he believes the individual who leaked the sealed indictment is responsible for the solitary crime in this case.

“It is likely that a serious felony has been committed right under District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s nose and he is not investigating it. Under New York law, it is a felony to leak confidential grand jury information, such as whether the jurors voted to indict. The protection of secrecy is as applicable to President Trump as it is to anyone else,” Dershowitz said.