- Lawyer Alan Dershowitz accused Waters of intimidating the jury with tactics from the “KKK playbook.”
- He said Waters had intended to “get to the jury” with threats if they acquitted Chauvin.
- Dershowitz added that Judge Peter Cahill should have granted Chauvin a mistrial.
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Lawyer Alan Dershowitz has accused Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of using tactics from the Ku Klux Klan “playbook” to “intimidate the jury” in the Derek Chauvin murder trial.
In a televised interview with Newsmax, Dershowitz likened Waters’ actions to that of the KKK in the “1920s and 1930s.”
“The Klan would march outside of courthouses and threaten all kinds of reprisals if the jury ever dared convict a white person or acquit a black person,” he said.
He was referring to comments that Waters made on Saturday to people protesting the police shooting of 20-year-old Daunte Wright at a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, an incident that occurred just 10 miles from where Chauvin’s high-profile murder trial was taking place.
According to a video posted on Twitter, Waters said she and the crowd were “looking for a guilty verdict” for Chauvin.
“We’ve got to stay in the streets, and we’ve got to demand justice,” Waters said. “I am hopeful that we will get a verdict that says, ‘guilty, guilty, guilty,’ and if we don’t, we cannot go away. We’ve got to get more confrontational.”
Dershowitz said, “First of all, the judge should have granted the motion for a mistrial based on the efforts of Congresswoman Waters to influence the jury.”
“Her message was clearly intended to get to the jury: ‘If you will acquit or if you find the charge less than murder, we will burn down your buildings. We will burn down your businesses. We will attack you. We will do what happened to the witness — blood on their door,'” he said.
Dershowitz told Newsmax that Waters’ “intimidation tactics” and the “threat of violence” should have resulted in a mistrial.
“The judge, of course, wouldn’t grant a mistrial because then he’d be responsible for the riots that would ensue, even though it was Waters who was responsible,” Dershowitz added.
Chauvin was convicted on Tuesday of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter after jurors deliberated for more than 10 hours over two days.
Dershowitz is not the first to criticize Waters for her comments, as her statements over the weekend in Minneapolis prompted a strong backlash from Republican lawmakers.
Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ted Cruz quickly accused Waters of inciting violence, and Greene said that she had moved forward with filing a resolution on Monday to “expel” Waters from Congress for “inciting violent riots and Black Lives Matter terrorism.”
Meanwhile, minority leader Kevin McCarthy also filed a resolution of his own to censure Waters for her comments.
House Democrats blocked the resolution on Tuesday with a 216-to-210 vote.
