When Robert Mueller convened a second grand jury in Washington, D.C., I suggested that the new location would give the prosecutor a “tactical advantage” in a criminal trial against Donald Trump or his associates, because the Washington jury pool will be overwhelmingly Democratic, by a ratio of almost 10 to 1. The Virginia pool is politically more diverse. I wrote: “There is the third rail issue of race. [A] predominantly white jury can be a different institution than a predominantly black jury. [T]here is no one-to-one association; predominantly black juries convict black defendants and acquit white defendants all the time, and predominantly white juries acquit black defendants and convict white defendants as well. But to say that race doesn’t matter at all blinks reality...” I have made similar points on radio and television. Jury experts would agree that a Washington trial jury might be less favorable to President Trump and his associates than a Virginia jury. As a result of making this obvious point, partisan bigots have accused me of racism. This is what Congresswoman Maxine Waters said on MSNBC: “What [Dershowitz] is saying is ‘all of those black people are there and they don't like Trump and so he's not going to get a fair trial and so they should take it out of that jurisdiction. It shouldn't be there to begin with.’ I don't like that, and I'm surprised that Alan Dershowitz is talking like that. We will not stand for it. We will push back against that because that is absolutely racist.”

As a result of making this obvious point, partisan bigots have accused me of racism.

I then participated in a radio debate with former Judge Nancy Gertner, an old friend. I asked her whether she thought that I was a racist, confident that she would, say, "No." Instead, she said: “I refuse to answer on the grounds that it may tend to incriminate me.” If I were generous, I would believe she meant that if she answered the question honestly — that of course, I’m not a racist for having made a correct statement — she would have incriminated herself among her partisan friends. But listeners interpreted her equivocal statement to mean that I am a racist for saying to the media what I have heard her say many times: that the racial composition of a trial jury always matters. In an opinion piece for Cognoscenti, Gertner later wrote that since a Trump-related trial would not involve race, the racial composition of the jury wouldn't matter because when it comes “to espionage and the selling of the presidency we are all Americans.” It would follow from this argument that an all-white jury in Mississippi, comprised of “all Americans,” would be as fair to a black man charged with espionage as would a more diverse jury. Nonsense! The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers — a group in which Gertner has been active — conducts seminars on “difficult topics,” such as race in jury selection. Does she regard this as racist? Joel Cohen — a prominent former prosecutor and current defense lawyer -- offered a critique of some of my arguments, while acknowledging that what I have said is accurate: “[A]ny prosecutor, holding a glass of wine in his hand -- in vino veritas -- who might seek indictments arising out of the current investigation, would acknowledge that he would prefer a trial jury made up of black Democrats, rather than white and perhaps, Republicans. And where the indicting grand jury sits is where the trial will ultimately take place.”

Reasonable people can disagree about whether Mueller took this “wisdom” into account in making [his] decision ...