Carlson: What's the lesson of the firing of Peter Stzrok for the rest of us?
Dershowitz: Personally I'm sympathetic to Stzrok. He was an excellent FBI agent for years in counter-intelliegence. He made a very serious mistake. The mistake was not opposing Trump. He's allowed to do that under the Hatch Act and other statues. He's allowed to express any views he wants. His big mistake was not recusing himself. When he was texting that he was going to make sure Trump wouldn't become president, that he has an "insurance policy", it was clear at that point that he could not be perceived as fair and just. So by not recusing himself, he violated his position of trust. I wouldn't go too far and blame it on the very top authorities of the FBI. They didn't know and when they did know, they demoted him and took him off the investigation. I think it's a blemish but I don't think it's a fatal flaw in the investigation. There are deeper and more fatal flaws. So I have personal sympathy for Stzrok, but ultimately I think it was the right decision.
Carlson: But don't those texts suggest why he didn't recuse himself? It's one thing to express a political opinion, and it's not disqualifying, but he was doing more than that. He was suggesting that his opinions would in some way drive the criminal investigation that he was conducting and that's a subversion of justice.
Dershowitz: Well that's the issue. He of course denied under oath that in any way he was influenced by his hatred of Trump in any of his positions, but when he says to his friend "we're going to stop him, we need an insurance policy" whether there's the reality of interference or the perception of a thumb on the scale that's enough to recuse yourself. That's why Rod Rosenstein should recuse himself. He is a witness in this case and the idea that you can be the chief prosecutor and the main witness at the same time is such an obvious conflict of interest that I don't understand how we can continue to go forward running this investigation. So we have at least two major conflicts of interest and I think it does raise some questions about the integrity of the investigation but let's wait and see. Mueller himself I think is non-partisan. I don't think he cares if he helps Republicans or Democrats. He's a zealot, some people say overzealous prosecutor and he's using tactics that I have disapproved of for 50 years, going after Manafort in order to squeeze him to get him to sing or to compose---those are very questionable tactics but they're used over and over again against people, sometimes innocent people.
