Legal expert slams Trump allies for pushing 'empty political promise' to undo his Wisconsin lossOn Monday's edition of MSNBC's "Deadline: White House," former solicitor general Neal Katyal discussed the latest push by former President Donald Trump and his allies to "decertify" President Joe Biden's 2020 win of the state of Wisconsin.
The premise, which is a core dispute as Wisconsin GOP voters decide the gubernatorial primary, makes no sense, argued Katyal.
"I can't help but think that if you watch these events unfold in our politics and you think to yourself that there could be some kind of a way to, like, decertify these arguments, like just kind of a priori, they should be knocked out of our politics," said anchor John Heilemann. "This is not a question of opinion or where you stand on public policy. This is not a doable thing. Why are we discussing it in any context right now in the state of Wisconsin?"
"I completely agree," said Katyal. "This Wisconsin primary is a really good illustration of how Trump and the Republican Party have succeeded in normalizing a brand of basically post-truth politics that allows them to blow off facts that they find inconvenient. And so, you say, there should be some way to decertify these claims, and there is. 62 different courts, federal and state, including the U.S. Supreme Court, which is not exactly in Joe Biden's pocket, ruled against them time and time again. And so, the — what the Trump people are saying is, well, look, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which is quite a — it's a very conservative court, in July, said that the drop boxes that were used in the 2020 election were illegal, and these were the drop boxes that were used during the COVID pandemic. And the result of this, they say, is, well, let's throw out the hundreds of thousands of people who voted that way."
That idea, said Katyal, is "an unconscionable argument."
"In elections law, the touchstone is always trying to give effect to the will of the voters, and they just want to toss out all these ballots," said Katyal. "Now, that's something that might work in, like, the Soviet Union, but it's as profoundly un-American as you can get ... even if it were right, there's no backsies here. There's no way to get a redo and do the election again. You know this is basically an empty political process by these people in Wisconsin. There's no mechanism whatsoever to take back the certification. These promises are literally ones that these candidates cannot keep, which takes, I guess, election politics to a whole other level."
Watch:Nicolle Wallace comes off of vacation break to explain how Republicans will respond to Trump raidNicolle Wallace, who previously worked in George W. Bush's White House, was asked how the GOP will likely respond to the news that Trump removed 15 boxes of documents from the White House that were supposed to be sent to the National Archives.
She cited Steven Ayers, a former supporter of President Donald Trump who appeared before the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack and the attempt to overthrow the 2020 election. After following Trump, Ayers was charged with crimes and made it clear that he felt manipulated.
"He's an insurrectionist turned January 6 select committee public witness who I think was an important window into how brazenly Trump and his media allies, people like Tucker Carlson, feed lies to the base," said Wallace. "But I would hope some of the people who may be on the fence in that endeavor would look like at Bill Barr, you know, defying and laughing and making a mockery out of Trump's lies and nonsense, calling them BS, over and over again."
Wallace went on to explain that while there might be a number of things that are political that Trump could be attacked over, the destruction of documents or stealing of classified information is something that is the least of them.
"Everyone close to Trump knows he's a liar," she explained. "They're acutely aware of his penchant for mishandling classified information. Trump has been mishandling classified information and you covered it at the time since [Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei] Lavrov wormed his way back into the Oval Office in 2017. I believe the National Security Advisor was either witness to it or tried to stop it or stem it. But if that is the crime for which there was probable cause to seek a search warrant, then we have our first window into how potential crimes by the ex-president are viewed by this Justice Department."
She went on to say that there is a "tsunami of questions" that "far outweigh the revelations on a night like tonight."
"We may just be learning the very first things we will know from now forward. As your first words tonight made clear, we've never done this before, but we may be learning the very first things there to know about how Merrick Garland and Lisa Monaco view potential crimes committed by an ex-American president," said Wallace.
Watch: 'It's never good': Michael Cohen responds to revelations Trump was raided by FBIFormer President Donald Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen was the unfortunate target of the Republican leader's attacks and retaliation, but on Monday evening he learned that his former client was falling under a raid of his own.
It was reported Monday evening that Trump's home at Mar-a-Lago was under a raid from the FBI. Trump even released in a statement, "they even broke into my safe."
"It’s never good when the FBI raids your property; especially when you’re Donald Trump and you’ve been storing documents at that location," Cohen said.
Cohen was referencing the report on Monday that there are photos of documents that Trump tore apart and threw in the toilet. There were previous reports that Trump attempted to destroy documents by flushing them, causing serious plumbing issues at the White House.
Several months ago, staff from the National Archives were forced to go to Mar-a-Lago and retrieve a truckload of boxes filled with documents that Trump took from the White House when he left. It was revealed that some of the documents were so top secret that they were for the president's eyes only.
AFP