'That is not the law': Analyst slams 'First Amendment freak' Trump lawyer’s 'insane' argument

During the latest episode of MSNBC's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, legal analyst Neal Katyal discussed the problem with Trump lawyer John Sauer's Monday argument before a DC three-judge panel in attempt to appeal the gag order imposed by US District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan.

O'Donnell noted, Judge [Patricia] Millett's argument that "there has to be a balancing test between the First Amendment and protecting the integrity of the trial process in a criminal proceeding," before asking Katyal, "How does constitutional scholarship balance these two things? And the First Amendment seems like it has much more weight than many other things in the Constitution. They don't all weigh the same when you're trying to balance them, right?"

The Supreme Court lawyer replied, "That is right. Here is how constitutional scholars do it: They don't do what Donald Trump's lawyer said today. I mean, Trump's lawyer sounded like an anarchist First Amendment freak. Like First Amendment over anything."

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He emphasized, "That is not the law. It can't be the law, for the reason that Judge Millett pointed out, which is, 'Look, we need to have fair trials.' You can't just have a criminal defendant going in and threatening witnesses, threatening the prosecution, threatening the judges and say 'free speech, free speech.' That's insane. So you balance the two things. Sure, does free speech have an important role, here? Yeah, 100%. But it's not the only value. That's what she kept saying. Trump's lawyer never got it. I would say, however, I don't think the government quite picked up on this either. They got so into the theory and the hypotheticals, they lost a little bit of just what this case is about."

Katyal continued, "I mean, this case, Lawrence, is about a criminal defendant who has a history of threatening other people, including when in trials, and that's what the judge last week in Colorado found, it's a person who talks and double talks so that it's threats that -- if you just read the internal threat, it just doesn't seem like a threat. You have to read it in context. And Trump always has some sort of explanation, the way a mob boss does of how it's not actually a threat. So those two things. And then number three, we have a history of people listening to Trump's threats, whether it's on January 6th, whether it's the person who, you know, attacked and threatened Judge Chutkan. There's a history of that. That history, all those facts were a little bit lost in the special counsel's argument today. Obviously, this is a phenomenal panel of judges. They know this stuff. But I was a little surprised by that."

Watch the video below or at this link.

'That is not the law': Analyst slams 'First Amendment freak' Trump lawyer’s 'insane' argumentyoutu.be

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