Appearing early Friday with MSNBC's Jonathan Lemire, former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance was asked about Donald Trump's latest claim about why U.S. president's need total immunity — and she responded that his bid to the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. is doomed.
As she told the host, Trump's case before the court contains a "fatal flaw."
"The Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia will make the legal decision based on the court record, they won't look at any of these extraneous comments Trump is making, but it's quite a closing argument to the voters of New Hampshire, right?" Vance began before joking, "'Vote for me because I'm guilty' is what we seem to be hearing, and when you think about the force of that argument — what Trump is saying is that any president should be able to do anything whether it's legal or not — and of course that's not how our rule of law system works."
"His argument that presidents will always have to look over their shoulder has a fatal flaw which is that he's the only president to ever face indictment," she explained.
"So when the court of appeals evaluates these arguments, they'll appreciate those real word aspects to the decision that they're making, and the legal doctrine very simply is not that presidents are above the law."
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"I don't think the Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia will have any difficulty rejecting Trump's arguments," she added, "And whether the Supreme Court takes it up and decides to let that decision stand. It can't be the state of the law in this country that presidents are free to commit crimes for the simple reason that would let Joe Biden, for instance, do anything that he wanted today to remain in office."
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