Dershowitz to Newsmax: CNN Lawsuit 'About Misleading Thousands'

00:17 / 03:55

(Newsmax TV/"American Agenda")Legal scholar Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax's "American Agenda" on Friday that his lawsuit against CNN for defamation is ''not about me, it's about misleading thousands and thousands of people.''

Dershowitz said that his suit, which CNN filed an unsuccessful motion to dismiss, is ''not about me, it's about misleading thousands and thousands of people. I said the president could be impeached if he committed crimes ... they doctored the tape to make me say the president couldn't be impeached even if he committed unlawful or illegal conduct.

"They simply distorted my words, the judge looked at it, he said, 'No, they don't get the benefit of the fair-reporting privilege ... their reporting was unfair.' They didn't accurately reflect what I said, and I'm gonna be able to prove it made a deliberate, willful, malicious decision from the top down to doctor my tape in order to make me say exactly the opposite of what I said.''

He added, ''Two commentators came out to say, Dershowitz said a president can do whatever he wants, including committing crimes. He could be like Hitler and Stalin, they used those words. They knew full-well that I had said exactly the opposite, and it's not about me.''

Dershowitz later noted that he gave an ''80-minute speech in which I said, 'of course the president can be impeached [for something] awful or illegal. The Constitution says high crimes and misdemeanors. In fact, CNN criticized me for focusing on the fact that it has to be a crime. And then, a day later, they had their commentators come on and say, 'Dershowitz doesn't believe that a president can be impeached even if he committed a crime.'''

He said, ''They knew what they were doing ... because they acknowledge that I had done a very good job defending the president and they wanted to undercut that. And so we will be able to depose Jeffrey Zucker, the head of CNN, we'll be able to depose those who made the decision to edit the tape, and we'll ask them: 'Why would they take out the words unlawful and illegal?' All of your viewers just heard me say that the only thing that would make a quid pro quo unlawful is if the quo were in some way illegal.

"They took that out deliberately in order to turn my statement from black to white, from white black, exactly the opposite of what I said.'' 

Dershowitz added, ''I'll be very happy if I win this case.''