Trump's new court filing 'sort of asks Garland to prosecute him': Harvard Law professor
Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe walked through his observations of Donald Trump's recent court filing over the documents seized by a search warrant at his golf club in Palm Beach, Florida.
Speaking to MSNBC's Joy Reid on Monday, Tribe called the court documents "very strange," a non-legal term reserved for extraordinarily bizarre cases.
"It's very strange," he began. "For one thing, it's filed not on behalf of private citizen Trump but filed on behalf of President Donald J. Trump. You know, it's never been clear that he distinguishes between himself as a private citizen and himself as president. That may help explain just psychologically why he feels he's entitled to all these papers. He says they're his. That's one thing that's really strange. Another thing that's quite strange, you mentioned yourself just a minute ago: he waited a couple of weeks. So, it's sort of too late to ask for some new special master."
Palm Beach County Attorney Dave Aronberg told CNN earlier on Monday that the legal filing was "a day late and a dollar short," referring to Trump's inability to file the challenge immediately upon the search warrant. Aronberg said this is largely the problem of having a limp legal team that spent more time trying the case on conservative news than it did try it in court.
Tribe noticed on page seven that Trump attacked the Justice Department for taking three days to get the search warrant and execute it. It's unclear why Trump is bothered by the timeline.
"Then, finally, it's strange, not so much what it says but what it doesn't say," he continued. "It doesn't really give any good reasons for thinking this warrant was illegal. In fact, one of the amazing things that I agree with is a statement on page 13 that President Trump, he still calls himself President Trump, should not be treated differently from any other citizen. Finally, he gets that right. Any other citizen who took top-secret material to not just a private home but a resort, like Mar-a-Lago, which has been penetrated by Chinese spies and perhaps by others, would be prosecuted under the Espionage Act. So, he is sort of asking Merrick Garland to prosecute him. Thank you, Mr. Trump, I won't call him President Trump."
Reid then walked through a list of people who were arrested for taking top secret documents in other administrations and were indicted.
"If he's being treated not as president but as a citizen, he's got to be indicted," Tribe explained. "Otherwise, the rule of law just doesn't mean anything."
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