'Inescapable': Legal expert says Trump winning presidency won't stop prosecutions

Former President Donald Trump, faced with an avalanche of criminal indictments, has sought to use his campaign for office as a kind of legal shield to defend himself from being prosecuted and convicted. But that isn't going to work, former federal prosecutor John Flannery argued on Friday's edition of MSNBC's "The Beat."

"What [we were] told the last time this came up when Donald Trump was president ... [was], a state case would have to wait until he leaves office. No?" said Melber.

Flannery disagreed.

"The reason is this," he said. "You may remember Vice President [Spiro] Agnew. He was prosecuted while he was the vice president. He entered a plea of guilty and resigned from office—"

"I hate to lawyer you, but in a federal case," said Melber.

"Well, but the point is the same," said Flannery. "He was prosecuted while in office."

"But the supremacy is over the states, argument would be you can't have 50 different states all saying they may or may not bring charges against Biden and he has to go on trial, whoever the president is," Melber pointed out.

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"Well, the Tenth Amendment refers to the states, police power," said Flannery. "It seems in the absence of a specific law that says you cannot be tried, you can be tried. Just in days we said you can prosecute a president in a civil case."

"You're saying — you take the position you think Georgia could go forward even if Trump returned to the White House?" said Melber.

"Absolutely," said Flannery. "In fact, there may be advantage with the series of cases — if he is running for office while being tried in Georgia and convicted any time near the election, presuming he is the standard bearer for the Republicans, I don't see that that helps him. It's going to be inescapable. These tricks he does in chapters right now using courtrooms for campaign advantage, that goes away."

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