Ex-Trump attorney makes startling remarks to president about possible third term

President Donald Trump met with Alan Dershowitz, a former Harvard Law professor who has represented him in legal matters, to discuss the possibility of running for a third term, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, and Dershowitz did not foreclose the idea that there might be ways around the 22nd Amendment.

"In an interview Wednesday with The Wall Street Journal, Dershowitz said he told Trump the Constitution wasn’t clear on the issue," said the report. "In a meeting in the Oval Office, Dershowitz handed Trump a draft of the book, titled 'Could President Trump Constitutionally Serve a Third Term?', which is set to be published next year. Dershowitz said the book lays out a host of scenarios in which an individual could serve a third term."

“I said ‘it’s not clear if a president can become a third term president and it’s not clear if it’s permissible,’” Dershowitz told the Journal. “He found it interesting as an intellectual issue. Do I think he’s going to run for a third term? No, I don’t think he will run for a third term.”

Dershowitz suggested, specifically, that if Trump were elected to a third term, presidential electors would not be allowed to vote for him under the 22nd Amendment — but that they could abstain from voting altogether, leaving Congress to vote on who becomes president, and they could choose Trump anyway.

Other legal experts broadly reject Dershowitz's argument, with James Sample of Hofstra University calling it "absurd." In his view, the only theoretical way Trump could get a third term is if he were elected Speaker of the House or some other role lower in the line of succession, and everyone above him resigned.

Trump has repeatedly teased the idea of ignoring the Constitution to run for a third term. However, in recent months, as questions have mounted about his health and fitness, he has conceded that it's probably not going to happen. "I guess I'm not allowed to run," he told reporters aboard Air Force One in October.