'Third World kind of stuff': Ex-prosecutor slams Trump team for military plan to stay in power

Former President Donald Trump's lawyer John Lauro, faced with major charges against his client for the January 6 and 2020 election plots, is trying to put a positive spin on the Trump team considering tactics to undermine democracy common in undeveloped despotic regimes, argued former federal prosecutor John Flannery on MSNBC Friday.

He focused specifically on a claim Lauro made on Newsmax earlier this week, in reaction to reports that Trump-aligned DOJ lawyer Jeff Clark wanted to use the military to put down protests that might arise from Trump refusing to leave office: "At the end, he asked Mr. Pence to pause the voting for ten days, allow the state legislatures to weigh in, and then they could make a determination to audit or reaudit or recertify. But what he didn't do is, you know, send in the tanks."

"I'm curious your response to this lawyer's — I don't want to call it a defense," said anchor Ari Melber. "I'll just call it this lawyer's words. And wonder whether you see it as the out-of-court thing of trying to launder everything — if you just talk about this stuff enough, maybe they think it loses shock value. Or do you see any legal or in-court strategy here?"

"Well, 'send in the tanks' is something that should send anybody to a point of just silently thinking such a thing, not saying it," said Flannery. "'Send in the tanks' is Third World kind of stuff. You know, if I can't have my way, I'm going to have tanks. You know, I'm going to use the Insurrection Act to suppress the people if I decide to stay in the White House. That kind of thinking. So I don't see that working in or out of the courthouse."

"The second thing is to, as [Lauro] said in some places ... that this was Plan 'D'. Like Plan Dumb," said Flannery. "That he would say, well, he had to do something else. So he does concede exactly what is charged against his client as happening."

"Then on top of it, he ignores the fact that ... the former president was given two choices," added Flannery. "One was, let's accept these alternate electors immediately, or let's send it off for ten days. Then the next day they talk about it again. And Trump says he wants the first alternative to follow. So Alternative 'D' was never really serious. Alternative 'D' is a confirmation that Trump was told, considered, and wanted to do one or the other, but did not want to do nothing. And all those choices were based on fraud, that is to say, there was no fraud in the election, which is the predicate for it. The electors were fraudulent. Then the legal theory was admitted to Trump and Trump's counsel, that [John] Eastman said, I don't think any judge would ever accept this. How do you get around that?"

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