Dershowitz rips Booker’s Kavanaugh comments: ‘That’s what they said about people accused of being Communists’

Fox News contributor Alan Dershowitz says rhetoric that Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination being a moment that transcends party politics is similar to the language used against accused Communists during the red scare of the 1950s.

In an interview with Tucker Carlson late Wednesday, the Harvard Law professor took aim at New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker (D), who called Kavanaugh’s nomination a “moral moment in our country” and urged the White House to move on to a new Supreme Court nominee.

“It sounds very familiar,” Dershowitz said. “When I was in college, that’s what they said about people who were accused of being Communists. It doesn’t matter whether you are innocent or guilty, if someone has accused you of being a Communist and you angrily responded and said you’re not, then…you don’t have the temperament to have the job.”

{mosads}”This goes all the way back to the inquisition,” Dershowitz added. “When they would call you in first and make you testify, and then they’d present the evidence.”

Dershowitz went on to reject arguments from Democrats that Kavanaugh, who has been accused of and has denied sexual assault by three women, is not “on trial.”

“Look, once you’re accused of the most heinous crime imaginable, it turns into a trial where you have due process,” Dershowitz said. “In America, we don’t let people destroy other people’s reputations and careers based upon an inference of guilt.”

Some Democrats, including Booker, have said that enough questions have been raised about Kavanaugh’s past behavior and recent judicial opinions to persuade them to vote against his nomination. A few red-state Democrats, however, have yet to announce how they will vote.

The FBI’s supplemental background investigation into the allegations against Kavanaugh was delivered early Thursday to the Senate, where the parties will take turns in one-hour shifts viewing the report ahead of a planned vote on his nomination.

The White House, which has maintained public support for Kavanaugh amid the allegations, and Thursday that it was “fully confident” the Senate would vote to confirm him. Democrats would need “no” votes from two Republican senators to sink Kavanaugh’s nomination even if every member of the minority party voted against him.