Andrew Weissmann dug into the Supreme Court’s forthcoming opening statements on former President Donald Trump’s immunity case Wednesday, telling MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace on “Deadline: White House” that the court’s “real evil” is that it delayed the hearing to April in the first place.
The move, the former assistant U.S. attorney and FBI general counsel, was “political with a capital P.”
“It’s his right to push these claims,” Weissmann said of Trump’s continued efforts to delay the case to benefit his 2024 presidential bid. “The culprit here is the Supreme Court and making this sort of a new normal.”
Opening statements in the Supreme Court case are due to begin on Thursday at 10 a.m. Eastern/7 a.m. Pacific. Wallace opened this segment the afternoon before by asking, “What profound damage has been done? How far away from true north are we as a democracy that this question is being considered at all?”
While Special Counsel Jack Smith wanted to “fast-track” the former president’s immunity case last year to reach a decision from SCOTUS while it could still inform voters’ decision heading into November, Wallace said that “the nation’s highest court has already done the disgraced ex-president a solid in terms of the timeline and the schedule. They have gift-wrapped an otherwise unavailable delay for him.”
That’s where Weissmann came in.
“It’s his right to push these claims. The culprit here is the Supreme Court and making this sort of a new normal … The Supreme Court has already botched this because they didn’t take it in December,” Weissman said. “There’s no reason to have this stay in effect right now because there’s no way they are going to rule that there’s immunity in this case.”
The legal analyst and political commentator shared that “the only argument” he’s heard from anyone in defense of presidential immunity — and that includes “the most conservative legal jurists” — is as it relates to unique foreign relation matters.
“But it’s not this,” he said, regarding Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
“So there’s no reason to have taken the case, there’s no reason to have taken the case and stayed the district court case. And so that’s the real evil,” he said. “I think what’s going to happen is the Supreme Court is going to issue a flowery decision about how presidents are not above the law, and it’s going to sound great and they could issue that in June and it’s too late, because what they will be saying is presidents are not above the law, but this former president is.”
He continued, “And it’s really, I mean, it is so political, with a capital P, in terms of what they’re doing here when there’s just no basis in the law whatsoever for a claim that he’s immune with respect to this case.”
Watch the full “Deadline: White House” segment in the video above.
