Former Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz met with President Donald Trump this week and said the constitutionality of his serving a third term was “not clear,” the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
According to the Journal, Dershowitz met with Trump in the Oval Office and offered a draft of his upcoming book, “Could President Trump Constitutionally Serve a Third Term?,” which is expected to be published in 2026. Dershowitz previously served on Trump’s legal team during his first term when he was impeached by Congress.
“I said, ‘It’s not clear if a president can become a third term president, and it’s not clear if it’s permissible,’” the Journal quotes Dershowitz as saying. His publisher describes the book as an “astute constitutional analysis” that “lays out exactly how Trump could become the forty-eighth president of the United States.”
In 2020, as Trump’s lawyer, Dershowitz asserted that a president’s action, even if taken for personal or political gain, does not warrant impeachment so long as it is done in the public interest.
Dershowitz did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The 22nd Amendment explicitly bans any president from seeking more than two terms, either in consecutive or nonconsecutive sequence. It states: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.” The amendment, passed by Congress in 1947, became part of the Constitution in 1951.
Since returning to office for a second term, Trump has not flatly ruled out the idea of running for a third term. The mixed messages have made it hard to know how seriously he is toying with the idea.
In February, he raised the prospect by asking the attendees of a White House reception whether they would support him running for a third term. The next month, in a phone interview with NBC News, Trump suggested that multiple plans had begun to circulate for him to run again. In an interview in October, Trump acknowledged the constitutional two-term limit prohibiting a 2028 run, saying it’s “not allowed” but that he “would love to do it.”
He has also doled out “Trump 2028” hats inside the Oval Office during official meetings and sold them through his private company, adding fuel to speculation of any potential plans to stay in power.
Asked for comment Wednesday evening, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said: “There has never been an Administration that has accomplished as much in less than one year than the Trump Administration. The American people would be lucky to have President Trump in office for even longer.”
One scenario that has been discussed is for him to run for vice president and then assume the top role after the election, though that appears to run contrary to both the 22nd Amendment and the 12th Amendment, which states that no person ineligible to be president can become vice president.
His allies have openly encouraged the idea.
During a White House Hanukkah ceremony on Tuesday night, Trump invited top Republican donor Miriam Adelson onstage. Adelson said she had spoken to Dershowitz about the issue, and as many in the crowd chanted “four more years,” Adelson turned to Trump to say: “Think about it.”
Adelson and her late husband gave $658 million to influence elections between 2015 and 2024, according to a recent Washington Post analysis. As they hugged, Trump told the gathering, “She said, ‘Think about it, and I’ll give you another $250 million.’”
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