Ex-FBI counsel rips immunity ruling as 'terrible decision made up of whole cloth'
Supreme Court 2022, Image via Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States
July 01, 2024
Concluding a complex discussion of the Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling that handed Donald Trump limited immunity from being prosecuted, former FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann called out the court's conservative justices for making up the law as they go along.
Appearing on MSNBC along with legal analyst Lisa Rubin and former counselor to the U.S. attorney general, Chuck Rosenberg, Weissmann tried to sum up what had just occurred as all three of them poured over the ruling and attached dissents.
"I think there's a big picture and a small picture," he explained. "The small picture: what does it mean for this particular [Jan. 6 insurrection] case. We knew at the outset that this sense of having this go to trial was going to be almost impossible. ... This makes it absolutely clear. There will not be a trial before November for the reasons that Chuck said, but there will be a hearing."
"So there is this ability to have White House counsel, Mike Pence, all sorts of witnesses and evidence that was not heard in the January 6th hearings now be heard by Judge [Tanya] Chutkan in deciding what is official versus what is not," he elaborated
Asked by host Katy Tur, "Doesn't it fly in the face of what Lisa [Rubin] was saying a moment ago? " Weissman disagreed as Rubin shook her head in agreement with him.
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"I don't think so," he replied. "There will be a hearing that Judge Chutkan can have. That's sort of the small picture, but in some ways what people are most focused on."
"Big picture, this is a terrible decision if you think that presidents should be treated like anyone else," he proclaimed. "This is made up by the court out of whole cloth. This is not in the Constitution."
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