Alan Dershowitz said the Justice Department should comply with congressional requests for documents related to the Hillary Clinton email investigation and the Trump-Russia probe.

House Republicans set a Friday deadline for all outstanding subpoenaed documents to be produced to lawmakers.

On Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan did not rule out the possibility of holding Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in contempt of Congress should the DOJ fail to do so.

"There's never been a more important time for our system of checks and balances to operate, whether it be regarding the president's immigration policies or the Mueller investigation or the Clinton investigation. We need effective checks and balances," Dershowitz said on "America's Newsroom."

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The Harvard law professor emeritus explained that "effective checks and balances" require that the DOJ comply with congressional oversight efforts.

He explained that the Justice Department often claims there is a national security reason for not turning over documents, even when that is not the case.

Dershowitz pointed out that the DOJ failed to turn over the "smoking gun" 2016 text message from FBI agent Peter Strzok about stopping the election of Donald Trump.

"I think it's important for Congress to enforce their requests, their demands and indeed their subpoenas for this kind of information because the public has the right to know," Dershowitz said.

Watch more above and see more from House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes below.

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