Watergate prosecutor explains why Trump has no hope of claiming executive privilege

Former Watergate prosecutor Nick Ackerman spoke to CNN's Jim Acosta on Sunday to explain why former President Donald Trump doesn't have any hope of claiming executive privilege for information about the Jan. 6 attack.

Ackerman did acknowledge, however, that because Trump has all of the legal options available to him, he'll likely gum up the Jan. 6 committee in Congress.

"The problem is that both of those issues are big losers for him," Ackerman explained why he doesn't think it'll be successful. "One is the fact that of course, the committee has the right to get those records. The interest of the committee in terms of getting to the bottom of the insurrection on Jan. 6th is absolutely paramount. And you couldn't come up with a better rationale. And the idea that executive privilege applies is nonsense. You cannot exert executive privilege to hide and cover up your involvement in an effort to overthrow the government and basically try and undermine a key element of our Constitution that allows for the counting of the electoral college votes."

Ackerman would know, it was the Nixon v. Administrator of General Services ruling where the Supreme Court said that any criminal cases can't be stopped by declaring executive privilege.

"Now, the problem with all that is it's got to be decided by a district court judge," said Ackerman. "It'll be decided against Donald Trump. He'll then appeal it to the D.C. Appeals Court, which should pretty quickly, you know, basically uphold the District Court. And then it'll go to the Supreme Court, which is, I think, very unlikely that they will ever look at this. But, again, it will take some time. This is not going to happen in a matter of days. And maybe not in a matter of weeks."

Watch the discussion below:

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