Former Congressman Jack Kingston (R-GA) got a lesson in the law Saturday morning for attempting to dismiss the coming indictments from Special Counsel Robert Mueller as nothing more serious than parking tickets.
Since Friday night, Kingston has been put in the unenviable position of defending the Trump administration after news broke that indictments and arrests are forthcoming as early as Monday morning.
Appearing on CNN's New Day, Kingston attempted to tamp down the story by saying the charges and arrests amount to "bullying," while maintaining there is no evidence of Russian collusion.
"I don't think they're going to find any evidence of collusion," Kingston began. "I think they're going to try to get somebody and use him as a stalking horse to try to get somebody else to say something. But, you know, a little bit of bullying is going on here and I think the timing is very suspect. We as Trump supporters are coming off a very good week, not just with the budget, but --"
Kingston was then pulled up short by host Victor Blackwell as the panel looked on incredulously.
"When you say bullying, who is being bullied?" the stunned Blackwell asked.
"I think that what they are doing is they're sending a signal, and Carl Bernstein said it earlier, they're sending a signal for other people that, you know, you better step forward, you better cooperate," Kingston explained. "Here is somebody who probably had maybe the equivalent of a traffic violation in terms of the big picture here and they're going to use them as an example."
As the entire panel burst into laughter at the mention of traffic tickets, former DC Democratic Party Chairman A. Scott Bolden jumped in to break criminal procedures down for the Trump defender.
"You certainly don't impanel a grand jury," Bolden began. "I'm a former prosecutor from New York and you certainly don't impanel a grand jury and hire the top lawyers in the country for a traffic infraction."
Kingston immediately tried to insert Hillary Clinton into the conversation only to have host Blackwell ask him to stay on topic.
"There's only one prosecutor in this case and that's Mueller," Bolden lectured. "There's only one investigation and that's of Donald Trump. Collusion as well as whether obstruction of justice took place. The real issue here is this moves them from rhetoric to reality, this is a criminal prosecution."
"Politics? it doesn't really matter with all that's going on," he continued. "Trump can say whatever he wants to say about Clinton. He can say this is a hoax. Well this moves away from it being a hoax, it's is harder for them to say that now. Now you've got criminal prosecution of individuals."
"If they're connected to the Trump administration, which I expect it to be Manafort and Flynn, look for the factual support where you get the collusion and then they're going to look at those finances between Manafort, Flynn, Russia and and eventually looking at Trump's finances," he detailed. "That's where the meat is, if you will. That's where the beef is and we don't know what they've come up with yet. This is not a political prosecution, this is a real one."
Watch the video below via CNN:
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