MSNBC host excoriates 'seasoned' attorneys volunteering to be Trump’s 'next 'covfefe' lawyer'

10 August 2023

MSNBC anchor Katie Phang on Thursday's edition of The ReidOut expressed her confoundment over how many "exceptionally trained attorneys" have been willing to "jeopardize" their reputations and careers defending twice-impeached thrice-indicted President Donald Trump's allegedly corrupt and illegal behavior.

Host Joy Reid began by pointing out how quickly lawyers fall out of Trump's favor when they disagree with him.

"The thing about Donald Trump is that he's both willing to pretend like the sort of shammy lawyers that are telling him things — people like Rudy Giuliani are, like, brilliant and geniuses and Eastman are geniuses — but at the same time, he's literally preparing to throw his own lawyers under the bus, Katie," Reid observed. "That is one of his strategies is to say, 'It is their fault.' And then he had all these lawyers who were flunkies. Let's talk about Bill Barr. Was a complete flunky. Twisted the Justice Department to turn it into Donald Trump's law firm. But he is now even willing to say, 'No, no, that guy, because he gave me actually sound legal advice in this one case about the election is now the enemy,' and here's how he's treating him."

Phang agreed.

"You know what's really terrifying about that analysis is that, listen, there's good apples, bad apples, and then the ones that everybody kind of, you know, would ignore. In this instance, putting aside the Alina Habbas of the world, putting aside some of the lawyers that he picks out of, you know, parking garages kind of stuff, he actually has exceptionally trained attorneys that end up being a part of his arsenal that he deploys to be able to get what he wants," Phang said.

"These are not casual practitioners of the law," Phang continued. "These are people, for example — like Bill Barr, like Kenneth Chesebro, like John Eastman for example — these are not people that just, you know, fell into the practice of law. They were actual scholars and or they were actual practitioners of a profession within which, you know, to [civil rights lawyer Charles Coleman Jr.'s] point, were regulated by bars, were regulated by licenses."

Phant added that the idea of 'We have to make sure that we comply'" has been largely abandoned by Trump's counselors.

"What's problematic is these lawyers like Chesebro and Eastman, they found also willing patsies like Jeffrey Clark. Remember, 'If I find an oil spill, I'll let you know' Jeffrey, right? That kind of idea. They run the gamut of experience, but they also do not run the gamut though of morality. They do not have a variation on a theme of morality. They only subscribe to one particular completely debased version of it," Phang opined. "So to throw away willingly something that is not cheap or easy to get — law degrees are not cheap to get or easy to get — and getting your law license is not that easy to get or inexpensive to get. But they're just casually throwing it away for a man that would literally throw them under the bus is shocking to me because what is it worth? Now they're all being disbarred and now they can't practice law. And for what? For a guy to pretend like you're the next 'covfefe' lawyer? And so that is a problem. I think that I don't understand the siren song of Donald Trump that it works for these lawyers to say, 'To hell with it. I'm willing to jeopardize all of it for you.'"

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