Donald Trump filed three new motions seeking to wriggle out of criminal prosecution in Georgia, but a legal expert called his arguments "laughable" and predicted they would "quickly" fail.
The former president's lawyers asked a judge to dismiss the charges because, they argued, he was acting within the scope of his official duties when he pressured state officials to overturn his 2020 election loss, and they also argued that Trump didn't know he was breaking the law, and the third motion cites double jeopardy based on his second impeachment.
"You know, you're laughing about it because it is laughable," legal analyst Chuck Rosenberg told MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "I mean, defense attorneys can write what they want, they can file what they want. It doesn't really matter because, at the end of the day, assuming this case goes to trial in Georgia, there's going to be 12 men and women in the jury box who are going to decide what they think of this defense."
"Ignorance of the law is not a defense," Rosenberg said, but the preponderance of the evidence should also weigh heavily against the ex-president.
READ MORE: Overcoming the Fox News-Musk-Trump propaganda machine
"He tried to steal an election," Rosenberg said. "He did it in a number of ways, by submitting slates of fake electors, by putting pressure on local officials, by trying to get vice president [Mike] Pence on that awful day in January to halt the vote and to substitute his electors for the genuine electors. A jury will see that, a jury will hear that. They'll see the evidence, they'll hear from the witnesses. It's laughable. We can laugh about it, at the end of the day, in a serious place, in a court of law, a jury will decide, and they're not going to buy it."
Trump will attend a separate court hearing Tuesday in Washington, D.C., where his attorneys will argue that presidential immunity should protect him from prosecution in a federal election subversion case.
"Mr. Trump filed a motion to dismiss the indictment against him because he claimed two things," Rosenberg said. "One, that he is immune from prosecution as the former president. The answer to that legally is, no – nonsense, you're not. The second claim that he brought is that double jeopardy precludes him being charged with these crimes. Again, the answer is no, wrong. Double jeopardy -- that's not double jeopardy, and that's not going to work to his favor."
"Maybe I'm biased, maybe I come at this from a different vantage point because I was a former federal prosecutor, but I think these arguments that advanced in the D.C. circuit to dismiss the indictment are frivolous," he added. "I think he loses unanimously and quickly."
Watch the video below or at this link.
- YouTubeyoutu.be
