Rep. Maxine Waters (D., Calif.) on Friday accused Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz of being "racist" for saying that the Trump administration will be facing an "unfavorable" locality for a grand jury because it is "solidly Democratic" and has a "ethnic and racial composition" not favorable to Trump.
Dershowitz, who has donated thousands of dollars to Democrats, told WABC radio host Rita Cosby on Friday that the new D.C. grand jury orchestrated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller is unfair to Trump.
"It gives the prosecutor a tremendous tactical advantage… the case now can be brought not in Northern Virginia, which is a swing area, sometimes Democrat, sometimes Republican… but the District of Columbia, which is always solidly Democratic and has an ethnic and racial composition that might be very unfavorable to the Trump Administration," Dershowitz said.
Cosby asked Dershowitz whether he thought the geographic move will be a disadvantage for the president. He responded, "Yes, I do."
MSNBC host Chris Hayes played some of the audio from the interview during his show and asked Waters whether the comments were "unfair."
"Oh it's absolutely unfair," Waters said. "What he 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," she said.
Mueller impaneled the grand jury in recent weeks as part of the probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.