Former FBI deputy director Andy McCabe called one of Donald Trump's legal filings the equivalent of a 5-year-old putting their fingers in their ears and refusing to listen.
Speaking on his weekly "Jack" podcast with legal analyst Allison Gill, McCabe ridiculed the former president for filings in his federal election interference case, including a recent motion to dismiss the case.
Last week, Judge Tanya Chutkan responded to Trump's recent filing that asked that fresh evidence be sealed until after the election — a request that was swiftly dismissed.
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The judge's dressing down evidently motivated Trump and his team to file a new “supplement to the motion to dismiss the entire case,” Gill said about the Thursday filing.
The lawyers cite Fischer v. United States, which concerns a Jan. 6 rioter, among the claims in the motion to dismiss. In that case, the rioter said that Trump told him to attack the U.S. Capitol. The judge, however, said there was no way the president intended to authorize that specific individual's conduct — a ruling, Trump's team claims, that disqualifies charges against him.
"He's reading it as if it's an exoneration," said McCabe. "It's not that at all. You can't authorize something that you don't have the authority to authorize."
Trump's filing then brings up a documentary in which former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi talks about not calling in National Guard soldiers, which Trump has claimed she should have called in.
"This is just the latest in this 5-year-old's approach to legal reasoning," said McCabe. "And this one I would call the 'jinx, you owe me a Coke legal reason.' It's like as soon as she said, 'I take responsibility,' without listening to the words that follow it, they just stuck their fingers in their ears and said, 'That's it! That's it! She's admitted it!' It's bizarre."
Gill went on, "I feel like this filing is the death of all logic."
