Obama-era acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal on Thursday marveled at the gall of Donald Trump’s multilayered argument about why he shouldn’t be prosecuted in a hush money payment case he’s facing.
“Altogether, ‘chutzpah’ doesn’t begin to describe these claims,” Katyal told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell. “These are claims that the guy can’t see straight. I mean, in what constitution on Earth would permit that seven-fold kind of argument for absolute impunity? It’s a recipe for disaster.”
Judge Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the case, had earlier in the day rejected Trump’s request to dismiss 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, related to the Stormy Daniels affair. Jury selection in the trial is now slated to start on March 25.
A former president is facing a criminal trial “for the first time in our history,” Katyal noted to O’Donnell, before spelling out Trump’s audacious “seven-fold” argument against prosecution.
Trump before his 2016 victory tried to cover up his alleged liaison with Daniels and the later payment in a bid to win the election, said Katyal.
Then, once he was president, Trump claimed he couldn’t be indicted for past crimes while in office.
Thirdly, Katyal said, Trump committed “more crimes in office” but claimed immunity, and then fourthly committed even more while trying to overturn the 2020 election result and stay in office.
“So then, fifth... he gets impeached by the House of Representatives,” Katyal said. “And then he says he can’t be convicted because the remedy is actually to prosecute him after he leaves office. He shouldn’t be impeached.”
“Then, sixth, he leaves office and he’s prosecuted. And he says, ‘I can’t be prosecuted because I was president at the time and I’m absolutely immune for acts I took while I was president at the time.’ And then, seventh, finally, for acts for when he wasn’t president, he’s now saying he can’t be prosecuted for those either... because he’s running for president again and is a presidential candidate.”
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