I’m talking to Jim Zirin, someone who knows all about Trump’s penchant for lawsuits — he wrote the book on them — Plaintiff in Chief. He gives us his expertise on what could happen to the president and his staff after the transition. Meanwhile, Trump has continued his phone calls to swing state governors asking for them to reverse the electors position, and thus, the citizens’ vote.
KRISTIN MILLER:
So how did you get involved with tracking all his lawsuits? What brought you to that?
JIM ZIRIN:
Well, I guess it started with my book — when I was doing research for my book. My book started with Roy Cohn. I knew Roy Cohn (Joe McCarthy’s sidekick).
KRISTIN MILLER:
Do you think that after Trump’s not in the White House anymore that he will try and use this kind of lawsuit tactic?
JIM ZIRIN:
Oh, I have no doubt about it. He’s going to try to undermine them and make the Biden presidency a failure.
KRISTIN MILLER:
You’ve said there’s a hitch to him pardoning himself. Why can’t he do that?
JIM ZIRIN:
[In the] first place, there’s no clear answer, because no president has ever tried to do it. But there is an old English saying, a doctrine, “No one may be a judge in his own cause.” So that seems to suggest that he could not pardon himself.
The two things he could do, under the 25th Amendment, he could say, “I’m temporarily not going to discharge the duties of president, and they’ll be discharged by Mike Pence,” and Mike Pence will pardon him. And then he’ll resume the duties of president. Or he may resign and Pence will pardon him. But that only applies, of course, to federal crimes.
KRISTIN MILLER:
Will there be any ramification for Bill Barr after he gets out of office?
JIM ZIRIN:
Well, I think there could be Bar Association investigations of Barr as to whether he politicized the Justice Department, and whether he acted appropriately in — certainly in the Michael Flynn case, the Paul Manafort case and the Roger Stone case. And then out of that who knows if they start investigating him.
KRISTIN MILLER:
Do you think Lindsey Graham could get censured?
JIM ZIRIN:
I think Lindsey Graham faces an ethics investigation in the Senate as to whether it was appropriate that he even called [Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger] and inquire — another state, not even his state — and inquire about the election. I mean, it’s like my calling a judge and saying, “How are you coming with this decision?”
You know, it’s just something you don’t do.
KRISTIN MILLER:
Recently a comedian wrote,”I didn’t realize our democracy was an honor system.” Does that strike you as true?
JIM ZIRIN:
Well, it is an honor system. There are lots of things you wouldn’t do where there’s no specific black letter preventing it.
KRISTIN MILLER:
Does he stand a chance of changing the states’ electoral votes?
JIM ZIRIN:
The Constitution really says all this is in the hands of the state legislature. The problem is, in a lot of these states, the law says the electors will be those that are elected by the majority of the people in the general election.
People voted in reliance on [the fact] that their vote would count in the election of electors. In none of those states is there a veto-proof Republican majority in the legislature.
And in all of those states, there are Democratic governors.
It’s a very cynical view of our democracy — the assumption that the Supreme Court, including the three justices he appointed, will vote for him on having the state legislatures appoint the legislative electors. I think it would be a constitutional crisis.
KRISTIN MILLER:
So journalists always rank at the bottom of most trusted career people under lawyers in surveys….
JIM ZIRIN:
Well, actually,I think lawyers are very — for the most part very reliable, and I think journalists are too, and I think the mainstream media is. I think it’s very easy when you read CNN or you watch Fox News, for example, or you look at The New York Times or The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal, it’s very easy to see what is a fact and what is an opinion.
KRISTIN MILLER:
Yes.
JIM ZIRIN:
And if it’s an opinion that you don’t agree with, you can disregard it. The press certainly should be free to express its opinion about our government — these people are our servants, not our masters.
It’s ironic that in the vice presidential debate, Pence made the statement, “You are entitled to your own opinions, you’re not entitled to your own facts.” Well, the fact is that he cribbed that line from Senator Moynihan, who was a Democrat.