Dershowitz suing CNN for $300 million in defamation suit

Attorney Alan Dershowitz has filed a $300 million defamation suit against CNN, alleging a “willful, deliberate, malicious effort” to destroy his credibility, with the longtime Harvard Law School professor charging the network selectively edited a tape of his remarks during President Trump’s impeachment trial earlier this year.

“What CNN did here, and it pains me to say this because … I have friends over there, what they did is they just totally doctored the tape,” Dershowitz told Fox News host Sean Hannity late Tuesday.

“If they had just shown the part where I said ‘if he does anything illegal he can be impeached,’ ” he continued. “But they doctored the tape to take that out.”

“I’m doing this to hold them accountable,” he later added. “They made a deliberate, willful decision, we believe from the very top, to purposely doctor the tape to make it look like I said something that was crazy, that a president can do anything, that he can commit crimes. Of course I never said that — I don’t believe it. I spent an hour in front of the Senate two days earlier saying if the president commits a crime, he can be impeached and that was a whole thesis of my presentation.

“CNN knew that and they doctored the tape and edited the tape to make me say exactly the opposite. Shame on them,” Dershowitz concluded. “They’re going to have to pay and some good charities are going to benefit from CNN’s willful deliberate malicious effort to destroy my credibility as a constitutional scholar.”

Dershowitz regularly appeared on the network for years until, according to him, he was barred from going on as a guest in early 2019.

“CNN banned me from their air because I was being too fair. I was trying to assess what the essential issue was, and I wasn’t being partisan. They didn’t want that,” he told Fox News in March 2019.

“CNN wouldn’t have me on the air because they want a one-sided presentation, and everybody who watches CNN was shocked by the conclusions. No one who watches me was shocked,” he added at the time.

The Hill has reached out to CNN for comment.