Trump erupts as unanimous court clears path to put him on criminal trial!

We begin this hour with the breaking news out of the nation's capital, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled former President Donald Trump is not immune from the criminal case involving his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Joining us now to break this all down for us, NBC's Ken Delaney and Rebecca Royfie, former assistant district attorney in Manhattan and a professor of law at New York Law School, and Andrew Weissman, former senior member of the Mueller probe, professor and an NBC News contributor. So, Ken, what are the top lines of this ruling, this 57-page ruling that has a lot of information? Good morning, Jose. It sure does. And it's worth noting that this is an unsigned ruling by a three-judge panel of two appointed by Democrats and one appointed by a Republican. So it's a unanimous ruling that resoundingly rejected all of Mr. Trump's arguments for why he should be immune from prosecution for acts as president. And it went back to sort of first principles that we are a nation of laws. It quoted from an 1882 Supreme Court decision that said all officers of the government from the highest to the lowest are creatures of the law and bound to obey it. And it also the judges added that it would be a striking paradox if the president, who alone is vested with the constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, were the sole officer capable of defying those laws with impunity. The DC Circuit has unanimously rejected Donald Trump's claim that presidential immunity shields him from prosecution in the federal election subversion case. He is charged with conspiring to defraud the United States, obstructing the congressional count of electoral votes, and conspiring to deprive citizens of the right to have their lawful votes counted. Those are not campaign talking points. They are the accusations now heading toward a criminal courtroom. Of course, I was entitled as president of the United States and commander in chief to immunity. I'm entitled to immunity. Every president has immunity, especially one that did the job I did. I did a great job. The three judge panels said every government official from the highest to the lowest is bound by the law. It warned that it would be a striking paradox for the president charged with faithfully executing the law to become the one official allowed to defy it with impunity. Two of the judges were appointed by a Democrat. One was appointed by a Republican. The opinion was unsigned with no dissent and no concurrence. For this case, the court reduced him to citizen Trump, the same criminal law, the same defenses, the same exposure as any other defendant. This is a major legal defeat. It is not a guilty verdict. We are a nation with no king and therefore even the president of the United States is just a citizen. No more, no less. And as such, they are held to the same laws and provided with the same defenses that you and I get. That is what the three judge panel on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled today in its crushing legal takedown that counter to Trump's stated arguments. Presidents do not have complete and absolute immunity from criminal prosecution. And thus, Trump must face trial for his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election. In their ruling, they reminded Trump what the Supreme Court has already declared, quote, No man in this country is so high that he is above the law. No officer of the law may set that law at defiance with impunity. We cannot accept that the office of the presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter. Trump's theory was crude. Once you strip the patriotic paint off it, if he did it in office or close enough to the outer perimeter of the job, the criminal law could not follow him out the door, not for a year, not after an election, not ever. The Oval Office would become a place where statutes go to die. Then I have an Article 2 where I have the right to do whatever I want as president, but I don't even talk about that. It's a thing called Article 2. Nobody ever mentions Article 2. More importantly, Article 2 allows me to do whatever I want. Then came the backup argument, the one designed to sound technical on television. He said a former president cannot be prosecuted unless Congress first impeaches and convicts him. Here what that actually means. Criminal accountability would wait on a two-thirds vote in a partisan Senate. Prosecutors would need permission from politicians before a jury could even be seated. The D.C. Circuit did not politely disagree. It called that an irrational impeachment first rule irrational because it would bar the executive branch from charging officers for crimes in office until a political body said so. Here is the humiliation baked into his own record. During his second impeachment, his lawyers told the Senate a former president is like any other citizen and can be tried in court. When removal was the threat, he was suddenly mortal. When a criminal courtroom was the threat, he became untouchable. One man, two constitutions, whichever one got him out of the room. History laughs at him too. Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon because Nixon was exposed. You do not pardon an immune king. You pardon a citizen who is about to face a charging document. Trump is demanding a country that forgets Watergate, forgets that pardon and pretends the presidency was always a sanctuary for alleged crimes. The panel refused that sanctuary. It would not sanction carte blanche to violate the right to vote and to have votes counted. It described the accusation as an alleged attempt to overstay his term and displace his duly elected successor. This ruling does not declare him guilty. It declares that the alleged attack on the transfer of power is not a royal prerogative. I have two thoughts. One is substantive, and one is the procedure of what's going to happen going forward. Substantively, this is a unanimous body blow to each and every one of Donald Trump's arguments. It is a huge victory for the government and completely vindicates Judge Chutkan in her ruling. It affirms it in every way, shape and form. The court calls Donald Trump's arguments irrational. In a brief quote for you, he said, at bottom, this is the court's opinion, at bottom, former President Trump's stance would collapse our system of separated powers by placing the president beyond the reach of all three branches. It describes the president's position as saying that a former president would be free to commit all manner of crimes with impunity. And it fundamentally rejects that in every single way. Courts almost never describe a former president's legal theory as a collapse of the constitutional system. This panel did. At bottom, the judges wrote, Trump's stance would place a former president beyond the reach of all three branches. Congress could pass a criminal statute. Prosecutors could bring a case. A trial court could docket it. And none of it would matter because the defendant would still be wearing the office like armor after the office was gone. The opinion is just as blunt about the product of that whole. His position, the court said, would leave a former president free to commit all manner of crimes with impunity. They did not confine that warning to a bookkeeping offense. They applied it to an indictment, accusing him of undermining the count that makes an election real. He also needed a political scare story. Charge him now and every future president will drown in revenge prosecutions. The panel weighed that claimed flood and refused to treat a talking point as a constitutional command. One former president in the life of the republic has been federally indicted and they closed the attack on the trial judge. They affirmed Tanya Chutkin in every way, shape and form. The next clip is why lawyers are calling the opinion airtight. It was masterful because it combined so many elements. It combined constitutional text, judicial precedent, history and just sheer logic and the party's own concessions, Trump's own concessions, to make just an absolutely cohesive whole opinion that is just inexorably leads you to the conclusion that he is not immune. And it was just so well done. And it also, one other aspect of the decision which makes it even more bulletproof is the fact that they narrowly focused on the exact situation in this case. They weighed the potential costs of not having immunity, which is what Trump talked about, which is the danger of a floodgate of litigation, of criminal litigation, which they poo-pooed. And they matched it up against, as they were required to do by the immunity case law, they matched it up against the public interest. And the public interest wasn't just the public interest in the enforcement generally of the public's interest in constitutional democracy and in the peaceful transition of power. Inexorably is the word that should worry his lawyers. It means the panel did not wander into politics and then find a way to wound him. It means text, precedent, history, logic, and even concessions from Trump's own side were stacked until the only honest landing place was this. He is not immune from this prosecution. That is why the opinion was issued per curiam for the court. No named author, no separate writing. Nobody peeled off to give him a paragraph he could wave on stage. Nobody filed a concurrence his allies could sell as a split. He has spent years calling judges illegitimate when they do not serve him. This time the court answered as one body and left him nothing to hide behind. They also made the holding harder to caricature. They did not write a sermon about every future occupant of the office. They wrote about this indictment and this alleged scheme to interfere with the certified transfer of power. Not a myth, not a rally story, a charging document, narrow facts, tight law. That is what makes the opinion hard to pick apart and what makes his delay machine look smaller. Then they put a clock on the stall he has been running since the votes were counted. The mandate was held only through February 12. After that the case is set to move back toward trial unless a higher court stops it. Asking the full D.C. Circuit for a rehearing does not automatically freeze that mandate. The message is blunt. Do not come back here for another pause. If the strategy is still delay, delay, delay, the Supreme Court is the remaining door and that court does not owe him an opening. He treated the judicial system like a prop. This panel treated him like a defendant on a deadline. The next clip is the blast radius. Which of his other cases this language hits and which ones it does not? Yeah, it won't have an effect on the Manhattan case or the Mar-a-Lago Florida case. Why? Because those are not those are charges that are either before Donald Trump was president or after Donald Trump was president. So this whole claim of immunity doesn't apply because the conduct is not for anything that was the Grafman was not something that he did while he was president. You are right that with respect to Georgia, this decision knocks that out as well, saying there is no presidential immunity for criminal conduct and it could not be more resounding in its language. And it also, as you've noted on page 39 and 40 of the decision, makes clear the court's view of the charges here about the president being charged with undermining fundamental democratic processes and values. It makes sure it says these are allegations. They remain to be proved, but it's clear that if they are approved, it views this as the most serious criminal conduct one could imagine anyone engaging in, let alone a former president of the United States. And Rebecca, I mean, in this very detailed description, the court, the appeals court goes into case law after case law and specifically issues that dealt with the separation of powers. What is the signal you think, Rebecca, that it's saying that this ruling was unanimous? I think it's an important signal. It's a signal that reaffirms this notion that criminal justice system isn't in the hands of the administration or the current democratic or political control and the judges and the judicial system the same. So essentially it's a battle between two different visions, President Trump's vision where he can control the prosecutors who work for him and they do what he wants him to do. And the judicial system is run by judges who are either Democrats or Republicans and do what's in the best interest of their political party versus this court and prosecutors who have been consistently affirming that our country works in a different way. We have an independent judicial system that follows the law and we have an independent prosecution that also applies the law fairly. And so I think in this situation, you have the court voting for its view as- Map the blast radius before his defenders turn this into a single case inconvenience. Manhattan is not this case. Mar-a-Lago is not this case. Those dockets are built on alleged conduct that either predates the presidency or follows the moment he left the building. A theory of presidential immunity was never designed to swallow a hush money record scheme from a campaign season before the oath and it was never designed to bless the alleged hoarding of classified files after the job was over. When the charged acts sit outside the term, the magic word president does not travel with the boxes or the ledgers. That is why this ruling does not decide New York and does not decide Florida. Anyone telling you it automatically collapses those files is selling you a shortcut. Georgia is the adjacent battlefield. There the claim is the same species of arrogance. That pressure on a state election apparatus can be rebranded as official concern and then locked away from a criminal jury. A state court is not a branch office of the DC circuit. It is not mechanically bound by this opinion, but language this resounding does not stay in one courthouse. It sits in the road. Any judge now staring at a motion that says I was president, therefore the phone call, the slate, the pressure campaign, the attempt to manufacture electors cannot be touched, has to drive around a unanimous federal holding that criminal conduct is not a presidential perk. That is the practical meaning of knocks that out. Not a remote control, a wrecking ball left in public view. Here the discipline the court refused to abandon. These remain allegations. They must be proved. Witnesses can be crossed. Documents can be attacked. A jury can refuse the government's story. Rejecting immunity is not a substitute trial and it is not a pre-written verdict. It is the opposite of a palace pardon. It is the court saying the republic still owns a courtroom and the accused still owns every legitimate defense except the one he wanted most. I held the office, so the law may not enter. That distinction is where seriousness lives. A serious country does not convict by headline. A serious country also does not let a former president convert the headline into a shield. The panel looked at charges accusing him of undermining fundamental democratic processes and values and said if those charges are proved, this is among the most serious criminal conduct imaginable. Not because the defendant is famous, but because the target was the machinery that turns ballots into a government, you can dislike prosecutors. You can distrust television. You cannot honestly call the certification of an election a private errand. This is bigger than one indictment because it draws a line his movement has spent years trying to erase. The line between presidential authority and personal impunity. Authority is the power to execute the laws, command the military under law, receive ambassadors, and take care that statutes are Impunity is the demand that the same person, once out of the chair, may never be asked by a criminal court whether he used that chair to keep power the voters had already withdrawn. Mix those two and the office stops being an institution. It becomes a costume. Look at the two visions now standing in the same frame. In one vision, the justice department is a household staff. Prosecutors exist to protect the principal. Judges are jerseys. An investigation is legitimate only when it hunts the other tribe. When the principal loses an election, the law is recoded as persecution. When the principal is charged, the charging document is recoded as a coup. Reality is whatever keeps him unaccountable. In the other vision, the one this panel chose, criminal law is not a souvenir of whoever holds the White House. Judges are not appointed to launder a party's emergencies. A special counsel is not a ritual enemy. A former president is a citizen with exceptional power and court. That vision is slower. It is less satisfying to a rally. It is the only one compatible with a written constitution. He will call the second vision radical. It is not. What is radical is the first one. What is radical is telling 80 million people their votes are real only if the loser agrees. What is radical is treating the vice president's ceremonial role in account as a veto. What is radical is assembling alternate slates as if paper could overrule precincts. What is radical is then arriving in a black robes courtroom and announcing that the entire sequence was official business and therefore invisible to a jury. Do not let the next week get laundered into mystery. He can ask the Supreme Court to take the case. That court can refuse. It can call for briefing. It can slow the calendar. None of those possibilities rewrites the sentence already on paper in Washington. The presidency does not place its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter. Discretionary review is not a promise of rescue. It is a gate. Gates can stay shut. If the court declines, the file does not vanish into commentary. It returns to a trial judge with a mandate behind it and a record that already survived the most ambitious immunity theory he could draft. If the court accepts, the country will learn whether the highest bench treats this opinion as an inconvenience or as the baseline of a republic that claims to have rejected kings. Either way, the argument he made here is now part of the public archive. He asked for a rule that would have made alleged election breaking untriable. A unanimous panel said the rule would wreck the structure that keeps the branches in their lanes. There is a reason his allies need you tired. Fatigue is the last defense when the law will not kneel. If the public can be convinced that every prosecution is identical, that every docket is a vendetta, that every judge is a partisan prop, then evidence never has to be answered. Only identity does. This opinion is a direct attack on that con. It says the system is not supposed to belong to an administration, a party, or a man who keeps campaigning against the existence of the case. Take the Georgia parallel seriously without pretending the dockets are clones. Different sovereign, different statute set, different grand jury. Same temptation. Rename an alleged fraud on the franchise's governance. If that rename works, then any future incumbent who loses can ransack a state house, a legislator, an elections director, a volunteer board, and call it oversight. If that rename fails, then the franchise has a backstop other than hope. This ruling is one of the most forceful statements in modern federal law that the backstop still exists. Take the New York and Florida limit seriously too, or you will overclaim and hand him a rebuttal he does not deserve. Overclaiming is how strong opinions get slandered. Precision is how they survive contact with a comment section. Immunity talk does not annex every embarrassment in his life. It annexes in his telling whatever he can stuff inside the job. The panel's answer was not convict him everywhere. It was you do not get to smuggle alleged crimes out of court by pointing at the resolute desk. And take the court's caution as a standard you should copy. Allegations, proof, trial. Those words are not courtesy. They are the difference between a channel that wants him smaller than the law and a mob that wants him erased by applause. He is entitled to contest the evidence. He is not entitled to cancel the forum. So here is the question that belongs under this video, not a personality poll and not a team chant. If he asks the Supreme Court to take the case, what should that court do? Leave this ruling in place and let a jury hear the proof? Pause the country again so the theory of the untouchable ex-president can get a second life? Say it in the comments with a reason, not a slogan. If you think the criminal justice system should not be an accessory of the last man who occupied the Oval Office, drop a like. If you want the next update when the delay machine moves, subscribe. The clip you just heard is the signal. An independent bench. An independent prosecution. And a former president who does not get to choose a different constitution when the old one becomes inconvenient. He asked to be the exception. This court made him the test case. The test is now public. The law either reaches a powerful man accused of targeting the count, or the count becomes optional for anyone powerful enough to call it official. That is the choice underneath the chyron. Choose it out loud.