Trump's campaign for president is now just a 'prison break': Legal analyst

Former President Donald Trump is no longer simply running a campaign for the presidency — he is running to retake the power that will let him cancel all the federal prosecutions against him, including the election plot charges for which he was arraigned on Thursday.

That's the view of legal analyst Elie Mystal, who discussed the situation with MSNBC's Chris Hayes.

"Your headline [in The Nation]: 'For Trump, the stakes of the 24 election just became: win — or go to jail,'" said Hayes. "Trump's only defense in these charges are, I'm about to be president again. He's got nothing else to fall back on. I felt the big takeaway from the arraignment was, everyone's on the same page with this. There is not even a pretense otherwise. Is it going to happen early enough? What was your takeaway by the updates exchange and the effect that was brought up?"

Mystal completely agreed.

"Trump's campaign for president is now not a campaign for president, it's a prison break," said Mystal. "The question is simply, can he get out before the federales catch up with him? The hearing was nice today. It shows the magistrate judge and the actual judge, they are in cahoots, in sync, and it looks like they are going to try to move this as fast as possible. That is encouraging."

All of that said, Mystal continued, "We are talking about putting a former president on trial in under 15 months. And even if you think that somehow the trial goes off sometime early next year, you've got the conviction, you've got the sentencing process, you've got the appeals to that process. There's just no legitimate way, I don't think, that Trump actually ends up in jail before the election, which means he is going to have the opportunity to free himself from jail by winning the presidency."

Watch the video below or at the link.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SlbXKKiHTU&feature=youtu.be expand=1 site_id=20266338] Elie Mystal says Trump's 2024 campaign is a "prison break"www.youtube.com