Alan Dershowitz, a member of President Trump's defense team, argues the president's push to have Ukrainian officials investigate Hunter Biden is not an impeachable offense if he believes it will help him get elected "in the public interest." Dershowitz argued the president's motive to win reelection would not be impeachable and that impeaching a president on mixed motives sets a bad precedent.



"Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest. Mostly you are right. Your election is in the public interest," Dershowitz argued.



"If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment," he added.



Dershowitz compared the situation to Lincoln's actions in the Civil War:





DERSHOWITZ: When President Lincoln told General Sherman to let the troops go to Indiana so that they can vote for the Republican party, let's assume the president was running at that point and it was his electoral interest to have these soldiers put at risk the lives of many other soldiers who would be left without their company, would that be an unlawful quid pro quo? No, because the president a, believed it was in the national interest but b, he believed in his own election was essential to victory in the Civil War. Every president believes that. That is why it is so dangerous to try to psychoanalyze a president, to try to get into the intricacies of the human mind. Everybody has mixed motives and for there to be a constitutional impeachment based on mixed motives would permit almost any president to be impeached.