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As much as former President Donald Trump is trying to claim he is a victim of political persecution following his indictment in New York, it was his own Justice Department officials, under his own administration — along with the politically evenly divided Federal Election Commission at the time — who first helped lay out the evidence his $130,000 payoff to Stormy Daniels was a crime, argued former Solicitor General Neal Katyal on MSNBC's "The ReidOut" on Friday.
"Pecker entered a nonprosecution agreement in which he admitted the payment had been made in order to help Trump's campaign — that's David Pecker," said anchor Joy Reid. "He testified twice before this grand jury. Does that say to you that [Trump attorney Joe] Tacopina might be trying to make it seem innocuous when it's really part of that kind of scheme?"
"Well, before getting, Joy, to Tacopina, I want to say my bottom line on this is, we should be absolutely celebrating the fact that we have a functioning judicial system that treats all of its citizens equally, but I don't think we should be celebrating the fact we have a former president who has been indicted," said Katyal. "This is an incredibly important event for our country and an incredibly solemn one."
"When Tacopina says this, that there was no crime and stuff like that, I think you're exactly right to point out, wait a minute, the FEC has concluded this was a campaign finance violation, and the Justice Department in 2018 sent someone to prison for this hush money scandal, a guy named Michael Cohen," said Katyal. "And they put Michael Cohen in jail for the same stuff, and the Justice Department, when they did that, they filed a sentencing memo, and in writing, it says this was a crime and it was directed at not Michael Cohen coming up with this on his own, but Donald Trump was the one who ordered Cohen to do this. And that was not just — that was the U.S. Justice Department, but not the Barack Obama or Merrick Garland Justice Department. That was the Trump Justice Department that made that conclusion. When you hear Lindsey Graham and others talking about this being political and stuff, you know, it's a little hard given what the Trump Justice Department said in 2018."
RELATED: Trump is so 'unmoored from reality' he can't act as a defense witness: 'Art of the Deal' ghostwriter
"My bottom line on this ... is we haven't seen the charges, Lindsey Graham hasn't seen the charges, so not sure exactly how he knows what's in them," said Katyal. "But whatever those charges are, Trump is going to be entitled to all of the protections of the criminal system, which our founders bent over backward to protect criminal defendants. All 12 jurors are going to have to agree that Trump committed a crime, and under the highest standard in the law, beyond a reasonable doubt."
"What I think people like Lindsey Graham are upset about is for the first time, Trump is going to have to face the music, a jury of his peers," Katyal added. "He can't plead executive privilege. He can't plead Speech or Debate immunity. He can't plead immunity as a sitting president. It's finally time for him to have to answer the call of the prosecutors."
Watch the segment below or at this link.
Neal Katyal says Trump's own Justice Department indicated his guilt www.youtube.com
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Trump is so 'unmoored from reality' he can't act as a defense witness: 'Art of the Deal' ghostwriter
April 01, 2023
Now that former President Donald Trump has been indicted for his alleged $130,000 hush payment scheme in 2016, he will need to mount an effective legal defense against Manhattan prosecutors.
Unfortunately, argued his "Art of the Deal" co-author Tony Schwartz on MSNBC's "The Beat" Friday, Trump is too delusional and detached from objective fact to do this effectively.
"I think what's happening right now is that he moves between rage and literally a blend of delusion and disassociation," said Schwartz. "I think his grip on reality is incredibly thin a lot of the time. When he is not out of touch with reality, he is just angry. What's he angry about? I've been caught. I could be caught. I could be end up in an 8-by-10 foot cell, I don't think he thought about that. I don't think he has the capacity to imagine himself inside a cell. We know from a lot of reporting that he is concerned he was concerned about getting indicted."
"You dealt with developing a narrative, as they call it, a story about himself, which he then super-sized, you talked about that," said anchor Ari Melber. "You have given money to charity and talked about that illusion of that. You didn't want him to become president. A story he would tell in this trial, would it be effective would it be different than the story his lawyers will try to tell?"
RELATED: Nobody really knows what would happen if a former U.S. President is incarcerated
"You know, I think he is so unmoored now, if you look at just, for example, his last speech, the one he did in, I think, Texas, last week — I mean, he is so unmoored from reality that I don't think he is a great witness," said Schwartz. "He would never be a great witness with a whole jury. Many of them would go, 'I don't believe you.'"
"In the past, I think he could have come off effectively with at least one or two," added Schwartz. "I'm not sure that — unless it's an absolute devotee, I'm not sure he can hold himself together enough to be in any way persuasive."
Watch the segment below or at this link.
Tony Schwartz says Trump is too "unhinged from reality" for a legal defense www.youtube.com
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Since former President Richard Nixon resigned in 1973 under the threat of impeachment, constitutional law experts have debated what would happen if an incarcerated person ran for president and won.
The question that has been largely theoretical for 50 years is becoming more relevant now that a former president and current Republican 2024 front-runner is in legal jeopardy.
A Manhattan grand jury on Thursday indicted Donald Trump in connection with alleged hush money payments for Stormy Daniels. The former president plans to fly to New York on Monday before appearing in court the next day to face unspecified charges.
Article II of the Constitution doesn’t offer much help. It only requires that a president be a natural-born citizen, at least 35 years of age and a U.S. resident for 14 years.
A 1973 Office of Legal Counsel memo and a separate 2000 Department of Justice memo were created to address the possibility that the Founding Fathers didn’t specifically address, Salon reports.
Running for president from behind bars isn’t without precedent.
In 1920 an incarcerated Eugene Debs ran for president as a Socialist Party of America candidate and collected nearly a million votes. Debs was convicted under the 1918 Sedition Act.
But what would happen if an incarcerated candidate won?
Salon’s Stefanie Lindquist writes that: “Because these core functions require meetings, communications or consultations with the military, foreign leaders and government officials in the U.S. and abroad in ways that cannot be performed while imprisoned, constitutional law scholar Alexander Bickel remarked in 1973 that ‘obviously the presidency cannot be conducted from jail.’"
Lindquist concludes, "If the people choose a president hobbled by criminal sanctions, that is a form of self-determination too. And one for which the Constitution has no ready solution.”
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