Harvard professor Nikolas Bowie appeared on CNN Thursday to push back against Trump lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who he says has incorrectly cited him numerous times during President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.
Bowie, who teaches and writes about federal and state constitutional law at Harvard University, wrote in an NYT opinion piece Thursday that, “American legal treatises and judicial opinions have long recognized the criminal offense of ‘abuse of power,’ sometimes called ‘misconduct in office.'”
Dershowitz quoted Bowie during his defense of Trump in the impeachment. But Bowie said Dershowitz misconstrued his argument, and confused “abuse of power” with “maladministration.”
Maladministration, according to Bowie, is related to mistakes in office not worthy of impeachment. But Bowie said abuse of power is not even close to the same thing.
“Maladministration is just an 18th-century term for doing a bad thing at your job, for not filing papers correctly,” Bowie said. “But to equate that with criminal corruption, that’s a joke.”
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Article URL : https://www.businessinsider.com/nikolas-bowie-alan-dershowitz-interpretation-abuse-of-power-a-joke-2020-1