Legal expert shreds Trump's main defense in federal elections case

Justice Department prosecutors are reportedly looking into allegations that former President Donald Trump's close associate Rudy Giuliani is a heavy and problematic drinker, which, if the former president was aware of it, would potentially undermine any defense that he was acting on the good-faith advice of counsel when he tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

But that might not even matter, argued former Mueller investigation prosecutor Andrew Weissmann on MSNBC Wednesday, because there's a much simpler way the advice of counsel defense fails: there's no evidence Giuliani actually advised Trump to do many of the most controversial things he did in the election plot.

"I have got to say, listening to that tape, Andrew, of Trump saying, I know what happens to people when they drink, the relationship he and his own family have had towards alcohol, and alcohol dependency, the fact that he does not drink, purely on a sort of client-lawyer basis, does it surprise you that he would have sought the advice of Rudy Giuliani, if he was demonstrably inebriated when he was giving him, already, accepted, controversial advice?" asked host Alex Wagner.

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"If you are trying to essentially shop for advice, and this is the best you have is Rudy Giuliani, potentially being drunk, Sidney Powell, who you privately are saying is crazy, you might be — yeah, this is all I have. Because this is all I can get," said Weissmann.

"It's also worth breaking down what exactly is charged here," Weissmann continued. "Because there is no advice of counsel where counsel says, oh, yeah, it is fine to threaten Brad Raffensperger with criminal prosecution. That is not something where it is going to be any claim that Giuliani said, yeah, that's a great idea. There is going to be no advice of counsel that, oh, Jeff Clark has an idea, we are going to send a fake letter to Georgia to get them to sort of go our way, and to use that. No, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell are not going to be saying, oh yeah, that's fine."

"So, you have to break this down to, what is the exactly is the — even if it's inebriated advice, what is the advice that is actually relevant to the specific parts of the charge?" added Weissmann. "And so I think this has a very, a very long road to have this fly in front of a jury."

Watch the video below or at the link.

Andrew Weissmann says Trump's advice of counsel defense isn't relevantwww.youtube.com