'Where were the lawyers in the room?' Ex-prosecutor ridicules Trump's Supreme Court case
As the Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments about President Donald Trump's executive order to rewrite the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and abolish birthright citizenship, former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann broke down the absurdity of the government's position on MS NOW — and predicted it would be smacked down resoundingly.
"I hate to go out on a limb and predict what's going to happen, but let's just say widely, widely within the legal community, the question is how close to 9-0 will this decision be against the administration?" Weissmann told anchor Ari Melber, himself an attorney.
"It's a real sign of where we are that something that, as you correctly said, was so fringe is now, you know, in front of the Supreme Court," said Weissmann. "Every single judge, every single one that has had this issue, including judges appointed by Republican and Democratic presidents, has rejected it. The first judge, I believe, to hear this asked the DOJ lawyers, where were you when someone came up with this idea? Like, where were the lawyers in the room to say, 'you've got to be kidding me?'"
"This really is the kind of thing that, you know, the first year of law school, you would be able to look at this and go, that's not going to win," said Weissmann. "And so it is correct to really think about why we are here. And more than that, why would somebody want to push this idea? In other words, who are you appealing to finish taking this position?"
"So when you're going to go to part two, I'll let you speak to that," said Melber. "But we'll put this back up on the screen, which is part one. When it says 'all persons born here are citizens' for a country like the United States, which was founded by immigrants and has this policy, there's no mainstream or counter-precedent that 'all persons born here are citizens' doesn't mean what it says. I mean, some language changes over time, but this is pretty clear-cut, Andrew."
"I want to make sure people understand what the administration is saying," said Weissmann. "One of the things that they are saying is that even if your parents are legally here — let's say they are here and they have green cards and they're in graduate school, just to put it in an academic setting, so I feel comfortable. And while they're here in school studying math or law, and they have a child, they're saying, no, no, no, that doesn't work because it's temporary ... it's not just saying that if someone came to the country illegally and had a child here, that they shouldn't have citizenship. Although the language of the Constitution is, they do. If you're born here, you're born here, period. It doesn't matter how your parents got here."
"And so this is one where I actually am viewing this very much as a litmus test for the Supreme Court justices to see ... are there any justices who are going to be so, are so enamored of the Trump administration that they're willing to actually say that this position is lawful?" said Weissmann. "Because it is one that has never, ever been accepted by any court, ever."
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