'Is that the actual argument?' Ex-Trump lawyer clashes with legal analyst in CNN interview

A former Trump attorney and a legal expert rumbled on CNN about why the 45th president's legal cases are in a tailspin.

The heated verbal clash on CNN's "NewsNight" saw sparks, and even forced CNN's Abby Phillip to referee at points.

In one corner was Tim Parlatore. And on the other The Nation's writer and legal expert Elie Mystal.

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Parlatore represented former President Donald Trump in his classified documents obstruction case before bailing.

Parlatore explained that if anybody is going to be blamed for any of his major criminal cases not seeing a trial room before the Nov. 5 election (assuming Trump wins the GOP nomination) it is Special Counsel Jack Smith.

"The reason why the Trump case is not being expedited, the immunity case, is because the prosecution did not articulate a reason why it needed to be expedited," he said. "Jack Smith went through great detail saying, 'Oh, it has to be done because it's so important, but he never said why and that's the problem is that you can't just say 'It's important!' because Jack Smith says it's important."

"You have to actually meet the legal standard and it's not in any of the papers."

This rankled Mystal.

"Is the actual argument here that Clarence Thomas and John Roberts don't know why it might be important to figure out if the president has committed crimes, needs to go to jail before the primaries?" he asked. "Is that really the argument that we're thinking here? Because I don't buy that."

"I don't believe that the issue here is that the Supreme Court just didn't know how important it might be to get Trump's trial moving and signed, sealed, and delivered before the primary process or before the Republican National Convention, or certainly before the election."

"That just doesn't make a lot of sense to me."

Parlatore answered that the "voters can decide" without a verdict in Trump's Jan. 6 election subversion case because "all of that information has been brought out through the Jan. 6 hearings."

Mystal then questioned why have a trial at all.

"So why have any trial," Mystal asked.

Then Parlatore flexed his legal bona fides and pointed the finger at Smith.

He repeated: "Jack Smith dragged his feet."

"You got to remember I was part of this case during the investigative phases," he said. "They could have brought this indictment much earlier. They didn't at the time we had Mar-a-Lago, which was going very fast that's a lot of activity."

"January 6, which was sitting there pretty much at a standstill — all the sudden, [Smith] brings this snap indictment and all of a sudden the next few weeks realize, 'Oh, shoot, I forgot to interview a whole bunch of witnesses.'"

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