Expert says Jack Smith will win at Supreme Court: 'Any lawyer could win it blindfolded'
February 28, 2024
The Supreme Court has now thrown into doubt whether it will be possible to hold former President Donald Trump's federal election subversion case before the election with its move to review the former president's claim to presidential immunity.
But there's one thing that special counsel Jack Smith should be able to win easily, said former acting solicitor general Neal Katyal on MSNBC, and that is the actual immunity argument itself when it is heard in April.
"I don't believe if a different person filed this kind of far-fetched argument of immunity, I'm not sure the court would hear the case, I'm not sure we'd get this delay," said anchor Ari Melber. "I turn from the calendar to substance because they are linked. Explain to us where those claims come down and why that is part of what's important tonight."
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"This is pretty preposterous what Donald Trump is saying," said Katyal. "If you think about the essence of our Constitution, maybe the most critical principle why we fought an American Revolution, it was the idea that no person is above the law. That simple phrase is what the complaint was against King George III was and the like. What Donald Trump is doing in this case is saying to the Supreme Court, I'm above the law."
"Just remember all of Trump's, you know, cockamamie claims," Katyal continued. "When ... others were seeking to prosecute him under the Mueller report, he said you can't indict me because I'm a sitting president and you can't indict a sitting president. He then gets voted out of office, and he commits crimes to try to stay in office on January 6th, and he then says, I can't be prosecuted for crimes while I'm president. So then Congress tried to impeach him, and he says — his lawyers go to the Senate and say, you can't convict him of impeachment because the remedy for a president who does this is to go after him with criminal sanctions, the criminal law after he leaves office. So that's what is now happening. Jack Smith has done exactly what Donald Trump's lawyers said he should do, or said we should do, which is have him prosecuted after he leaves office. And now he's saying, oh, no, forget about what I said before. I'm absolutely immune from criminal prosecution."
"These claims don't add up," said Katyal. "They certainly don't add up in a constitutional structure like ours. This is a very easy case. I suspect any lawyer could win it blindfolded, and, you know, and half-asleep. So it is frustrating to me that the idea the U.S. Supreme Court is going to be delaying this trial for a couple of months to hear what is a very, very easy case legally."
Watch the video below or at the link here.
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