Attorneys for Donald Trump filed a motion late Monday afternoon asking the U.S. Supreme Court to put on hold a lower court’s ruling rejecting his claims of “presidential immunity.” But legal experts were quick to trash the filing that is critical to his defense, calling it “bizarre” and questioning why it quotes baseball icon Yogi Berra in the very first sentence.
NBC News calls Trump’s decision to go to the U.S. Supreme Court “a last-ditch effort to prevent his prosecution in the federal election interference case from moving closer to trial.” In so doing, “Trump asked the justices to put on hold an appeals court ruling that rejected his broad claim of presidential immunity in relation to events leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.”
Professor of law Andrew Weissmann, the well-known MSNBC legal analyst and former DOJ official who also worked on the Mueller Report, appeared stunned just moments after reading the Trump motion on Monday.
Asked, “what strikes you?” Weissmann paused momentarily, then replied, “Two things.”
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“The first is the incredibly inappropriate first sentence, citing Yogi Berra. You know, if you were going to be snarky, they might as well have cited Yogi Bear. I mean, this is, that is, that is just a bizarre way to start.”
“Remember,” Weissmann continued, “Donald Trump and his lawyers have said that their position is that the President of the United States can kill people. And as long as he hasn’t been impeached, successfully, that he was impeached and convicted for it, he cannot be prosecuted. So that for something this serious, that is a bizarre, really bizarre first sentence.”
“The second thing is that stressing this argument about, shifting I think a bit their theory, which is that all of the actions that are charged by Jack Smith are within the outer bounds of what a president can do. The problem with that is that a very, very well respected 11th Circuit Judge, the chief judge, Judge Prior has rejected that in connection with a decision that Judge Prior wrote in connection with Mark Meadows, so I don’t think leading with that kind of argument, after leading where the first sentence is Yogi Berra then going to an argument that you know that Judge Pryor has rejected? Both of those are not terribly, in my view, strong ways to start,” he concluded, granting that “this is just my initial impression.”
MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin also blasted the arguments in the motion.
“So I looked at what his argument is about the ‘irreparable injury’ and I have to tell you that legally it’s not particularly strong,” Rubin began. “First, he says it’s axiomatic that if he’s immune, he doesn’t have to stand trial. But for many people, the act of standing trial is a hideous expense and extraordinarily disruptive to their lives. We’re talking about a guy who is using a leadership pack as his legal defense slush fund to the tune of dozens of millions of dollars and probably has not spent a personal dime in defending this case at all.”
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“In fact, when I look at this FEC filings, I see the names of dozens of law firms that I recognize, many of which have been involved in this exact case. Then he says it could radically disrupt his campaign for president if he’s forced to stand trial again. I wish some of our political colleagues were here on air with us right now because I bet you that folks like Garrett Haake and Vaughn Hilliard and Jake Traylor and others could tell you, President Trump isn’t actually on the campaign trail that much. He’s on the campaign trail during weekends, but he finds lots of ways to get his messages out. And the most effective way for him right now seems to be True Social, which doesn’t require him to be in any one particular place, and certainly doesn’t require him to be in any one particular state.”
Watch the MSNBC segment below or at this link.
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