Obama-era acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal on Sunday expressed his impatience at still waiting for a three-judge D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals panel to rule on Donald Trump’s claim — which it heard early January — that he can’t be prosecuted in the D.C. election subversion case because, he argues, he had total immunity for acts committed as POTUS.
If Trump loses his appeal, as is expected, he may take it to the U.S. Supreme Court. The trial could then be pushed to summer or fall, or even postponed until after the election, following which Trump could pardon himself or stop the prosecutions if he becomes the GOP nominee and wins back the White House.
“I am officially now at the freakout stage. I’ve resisted that for a long time,” Katyal told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki.
“You don’t typically freak out so that’s important,” Psaki acknowledged.
“I think we’re now at the point, to use a different legal phrase, that ‘justice delayed is justice denied,’” Katyal responded. “I can’t imagine a more compelling need for speed than the idea that American citizens deserve to know before the election whether a candidate for office is a felon and an insurrectionist. And it’s even more galling to me because this is an easy case. There is no responsible constitutional scholar who thinks Donald Trump is right, that there is absolute immunity.”
He added, “This is a real problem.”
Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann said he was “in violent agreement” with Katyal, argued there “really is no reason” for a delay. He also called Trump’s claim to immunity “absurd” and “preposterous.”
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