What 'Trump doesn’t seem to understand' about his own immunity argument: Elie Mystal
During the latest episode of MSNBC's All In With Chris Hayes, The Nation justice correspondent Elie Mystal explained why Donald Trump and his lawyers don't understand their own argument for the ex-president's immunity against prosecution.
Hayes pointed to Mystal's Thursday, January 18 tweet, in which he wrote, "To recap, everybody agrees that Trump's lawyer fell into a trap last week, when he said that Trump could order Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival. So Trump's response has been to demand the immunity to assassinate political rivals."
Mystal then emphasized, "And the thing Trump and his lawyers forget, I think, is that they ain't president yet. So if the Supreme Court says that the presidents have this complete immunity from prosecution or whatever, what's to stop, oh I don't know, the actual president, Joe Biden, from launching a preemptive strike on a rebel stronghold at Mar-a-Lago, to engineer a regime change. What's to stop from him doing that? I don't think Trump has thought this through. Perhaps it's like on the next page of his bedside coffee of Mein Kampf, he hasn't gotten to work or the logic of his argument goes."
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He continued, "But for the record, as [former federal prosecutor] Andrew [Weissmann] was saying, I do not think that Biden has the power to launch a strike against his political rival, right. I think it would violate Posse Comitatus, and you know — murder laws. And so I think that Biden, if he did that, that would be prosecuted. Trump doesn't seem to understand, and the people who support Trump don't seem to understand that the powers he calls onto himself, they then must be given to every single other president. But I think John Roberts will understand that."
According to The Brennan Center for Justice, "The Posse Comitatus Act bars federal troops from participating in civilian law enforcement except when expressly authorized by law."
Watch the video below or at this link.
Elie Mystal: What 'Trump doesn’t seem to understand' about his own immunity argumentyoutu.be
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