Appeals court uses Bill Clinton as an example for nixing Trump’s immunity claim

Former President Donald Trump was ruled by a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. to not be immune from criminal prosecution in the federal election conspiracy case on Tuesday.

And the opinion is full of historical precedent that is fatal to the former president's case, said legal analyst Lisa Rubin on MSNBC.

In particular, they cite the fact that former President Bill Clinton clearly believed he could be prosecuted for perjury — and gave up his law license as part of a deal to avoid that.

"You'll remember that at oral argument, but also in the brief, one of the arguments that Trump's lawyers made was, would it actually be okay to prosecute, for example, former President Obama for war crimes, and went through a litany of hypotheticals of things that other presidents had done that they asserted were sort of on the edge of lawfulness and legality and suggested that, of course presidents are immune, otherwise those people, a, would have feared prosecution, and, b, might be been prosecuted themselves," said Rubin.

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However, she continued, "You see an ample refutation of that on page 33 of the opinion, where they say a number of presidents did not believe themselves to be immune from criminal liability for official acts during their presidency."

"Not only did they cite the fact that former President Ford pardoned Richard Nixon after he left office, but they also talk about former President Clinton, who agreed to a suspension of his law license and a $25,000 fine, in exchange for an agreement from the then-independent counsel not to prosecute him for perjury," said Rubin.

Watch the video below or at the link here.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKGnkFoZoXM&feature=youtu.be expand=1 site_id=20266338] Lisa Rubin explains how D.C. Circuit used Clinton to smack down Trumpwww.youtube.com