President Donald Trump will lose as he appeals to keep in place his executive order revoking birthright citizenship, former federal prosecutor Elie Honig told CNN's Jake Tapper on Thursday afternoon.
This comes after a Reagan-appointed federal judge in Seattle blocked the order, tearing into Trump's lawyers and calling the denial of passports to American-born children without citizen or permanent resident parents "a blatantly unconstitutional order."
"Kind of just assume this is going to end up in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, right?" said Tapper.
"I'm sure it will, Jake," said Honig. "And I'm sure Donald Trump will lose this in the appeals court and in the U.S. Supreme Court, because at its core, this is really not a liberal versus conservative, Democrat versus Republican issue. This is just a 'Can you read the law?' issue."
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The facts are simple, Honig continued: "Section One of the 14th Amendment ... says any person who is born or naturalized in the United States and subject to U.S. jurisdiction is a citizen. On top of that, Congress passed a law in 1940 and then reaffirmed it in 1952, saying the same thing. And on top of all that, there is a U.S. Supreme Court decision from 1898. But it's still good law, essentially saying the same thing. A person who was born here of noncitizen parents is a citizen."
"And these defenses ... these responses from the Trump team saying, well, it's bad policy or it's bad for national security, that doesn't matter," Honig added. "It's a constitutional provision. It's not about whether does it serve us well or not. It's in the Constitution. It's been reaffirmed by Congress, reaffirmed by the Supreme Court. And I think Trump will fail here."
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