Social media erupted Friday after celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz called former President Donald Trump's conviction in his hush money case the "worst legal verdict" he's seen in 60 years.
Trump last week became the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes when New York jurors found him guilty of all 34 charges in a scheme to cover-up a plot to unlawfully sway the 2016 election via a hush money payment to a porn star Stormy Daniels, who said the two had sex.
Dershowitz, a prominent lawyer and legal scholar known for his often provocative and controversial takes, appeared Thursday on Piers Morgan Uncensored. In response to Morgan's question about "how sound" the verdict in Trump's case was, Dershowitz responded that from "1 to 10, it was a below 20."
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"It's the worst legal verdict I've seen in 60 years, practicing, writing, litigating ... cases," he said. "It's now days since the verdict. I still don't know what he was convicted of."
Predictably, social media users took the opportunity to push back against Dershowitz's claim, with multiple users on X, formerly Twitter, reminding him Friday of another controversial verdict.
"Worse than OJ?" wrote one user.
Another responded: "NO, THAT WOULD BE THE OJ TRIAL YOU WERE APART (sic) OF BY FAR."
And a third said: "Guess he slept through that whole 'OJ' verdict."
O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murder charges in the deaths of the NFL star's ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and Ron Goldman. The now-infamous verdict was credited to his so-called “Dream Team” of lawyers, which included Dershowitz, who has represented other major public figures such as Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein.
The Harvard law professor emeritus, who self-identified as a liberal Democrat who voted against Trump, opined that the former president may have been convicted of intending to cheat on his taxes, defrauding voters who "obviously knew he was a sexual scoundrel," or possibly seeking to make an illegal campaign contribution.
"I have never seen a case where even after the verdict came down we don't know what he was convicted of," Dershowitz said. "No one in history — in history — has ever been convicted of failing to disclose hush money payment paid to somebody. Why would anybody pay hush money if they had to disclose it?"
Dershowitz lamented what he called a "weaponization, a distortion" of the criminal justice system.
