Many legal experts publicly slammed a brief Donald Trump lawyers filed with the US Supreme Court Tuesday, urging the justices to grant the former president absolute immunity from prosecution in his DC January 6 election interference case.
CNN's Kaitlan Collins asked CNN legal commentator Elie Honig about his thoughts on how he believes the high court may respond to the brief.
Collins noted in the brief, Trump lawyers "include statements like this, saying that [Trump] communicated with the vice president, the vice president's official staff, members of congress to urge them to exercise their official duties and the election certification process in accordance with the position decision based on voluminous information available to President Trump in his official capacity, that the election was tainted by extensive fraud and irregularities."
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The CNN host then emphasized, "It's not true."
"That's some spin, right?" Honig said.
"So how does the Supreme Court read something like that?" Collins asked.
"That's the problem," Honig replied. "The argument that he if he was within a scope, he's covered. That's potentially legitimate. But the twisting of logic and reality that Trump has to do to get there, to get what he did within the scope of the presidency is facially ridiculous. He says, 'Well, I was just calling the vice president and asked him to do his job. I was just calling the georgia secretary of state and ask him to do his job.' No, he wasn't. I mean, We've seen the calls. We've heard the testimony."
The legal expert continued, "He's asking them to violate their oaths of office. That's where I think he's going to run into trouble. And there's one more thing that I have to note about the brief. Donald Trump's lawyers make the mistake of saddling a good, decent argument about whether he's in the scope or not with a ridiculous argument which is this impeachment argument, that he can only be indicted if he's been impeached and then convicted by the Senate."
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He emphasized, "I don't know why they include that. They don't need that. And to me that sinks the arguments. So, if I'm advising Trump's legal team — which I'm not — but if I'm advising any normal person, I would say, 'leave out the lousy argument, just bank on the good one here.'"
Watch the video below or at this link.
'That’s some spin, right?' Legal expert highlights Trump lawyers' one 'mistake' in SCOTUS brief www.youtube.com
