Supreme Court Ruling on Trump's Immunity is 'Much More of a Disaster,' Says Legal Analyst

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00:00Something that Justice Barrett disagreed on, but go ahead.

00:02I want to put my voice in with Andrew's choir here and to say this is much more of a disaster

00:09than it might seem based on the rules that are being carved here and for two reasons.

00:13One, at oral argument John Sauer for former President Trump acknowledged that the fraudulent

00:18elector scheme was what he would describe as private conduct and despite that concession

00:23in the majority opinion they're saying that still lives for another day to determine whether or not

00:29that's private. That's conduct that Chief Justice Roberts expressly describes among the buckets of

00:35stuff that Judge Chutkan still has to weigh whether it's private or official indicating

00:40that they think it might be official. The second thing and Katie this is a big deal is on page 18

00:45there's a big paragraph in terms of the guidelines for Judge Chutkan in determining what's official

00:50and what's unofficial and and they say the majority in dividing official from unofficial

00:56courts may not inquire into the president's motives. This was a huge issue at oral argument

01:01Chief Justice Roberts asking John Sauer what about bribery? Let's say former President Trump or a

01:06president appoints somebody to an ambassadorship and gets a whole bunch of money for that. Are you

01:10essentially saying that we can't consider the bribery but we can consider the acceptance of

01:15the money? That's tautological, that's nonsensical and despite that they are now carving a rule out

01:21that says the motive can't be considered. In other words if you appoint somebody to an

01:25ambassadorship it doesn't matter whether you're doing it for your own private gain that's still

01:30official. How can they write an opinion that says that? How can that be? I don't know how that can

01:35be but I want to be really clear with what we are seeing here and I want to go back to Neil's

01:39comments. This is not so much an opinion as it is a broad edict meant to serve a particular moment

01:47even while they say they are writing a rule for the agents. This is a rule for the moment. Let's

01:52bring in Maya Wiley, officially civil rights attorney, former assistant U.S. attorney and

01:56president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and Human Rights. Maya, give us your

02:02top line thoughts coming to this conversation. Welcome. Thank you. My top line legal thoughts

02:08are cray-cray. So I was right there with Andrew and I love Chuck and I want to read it the way

02:14Chuck is reading it and I actually had what I was going to jump in and say exactly what Lisa just

02:19said about the motives point. So why don't we just go back for a minute to what the indictment alleges

02:26because that's what makes it so clear that this is such an in so many other ways there's so many

02:30things we could say but remember that this indictment starts even on the first conspiracy

02:36on conspiracy to defraud the U.S. going step by step about every executive in the Trump

02:44administration appointed by Donald Trump telling him he lost the election. That's how the indictment

02:52starts. Literally DOJ, Homeland Security, his cyber security appointee who he then fired

03:02everyone including and then you could talk about the private side his campaign manager

03:06telling him he lost the election and that in Arizona which is the first of the seven states

03:11that is you know run through in the indictment says all the things Donald Trump directly did

03:17despite being told there was no evidence of the things he was pushing an Arizona elected

03:23officials on and by the way what is the official act of a president about how a state is executing

03:32its elections? Calling up personally so I agree with Chuck if you were reading this in the way

03:38I actually think the fact that we're even talking about this when we look back at U.S.

03:44versus Nixon where Jaworski actually had every assumption he could prosecute Nixon

03:49didn't because he thought it was a bad decision not because he didn't think he could do it you

03:55even had U.S. senators in the Trump impeachment think that he could still be indicted which at

04:00least at that part Mitch McConnell said so Mitch McConnell said so at least the Supreme Court says

04:05that but go back to the fact that they wrote this opinion the way they wrote it on the facts

04:10of this indictment makes it so clear to me that it is not written for the ages. Let's bring in

04:18Neal Katyal. Neal. Yeah I want to return to this point from the dissents about the impact of this

04:23decision today on our democracy and you know in response to Chuck and Chuck's absolutely right

04:29the majority says there'll be case-by-case hearings to determine whether something is

04:34an official act or not. I just don't think and I agree here with the dissent that that's any

04:40sort of protection here we've never needed those kinds of case-by-case hearings before

04:45we've always just assumed a president is not above the law and in these hearings these case-by-case

04:50hearings as Lisa points out you can't even introduce any evidence of a president's motive

04:56why he was trying to do something like pressure the Justice Department or do whatever and there'll

05:01be a presumption in favor of the president as Justice Jackson says that's just ridiculous

05:07and here's what practically this means a president like Donald Trump next year or whoever the

05:12president is can take a blatantly illegal act slap the label hey this is an official act and

05:19write that in the preface to whatever the heck he's doing and now we're going to have to have

05:23hearings and so on before district judges and then appeals to determine whether it's truly

05:29an official act or not and it'll all take place against the backdrop of this Supreme Court decision

05:34which says when you pressure if you're the president and you pressure the Justice Department

05:40to throw out or to to impugn an election results where you obviously have the greatest of personal

05:46motives that's a person that's not a personal act that's an official act so if that's your

05:51standard for what is an official act much else is going to be official and what does this mean

05:57practically I think it means if you're Joe Biden if you're a democrat who's running for the president

06:02your path right now is clear you have to run against the Supreme Court you have to run against

06:08this decision this is not America if you want to make America great again you got to return to the

06:13rule of law this decision today unfortunately is a blueprint on how to end the rule are you

06:19arguing adding justices to the Supreme Court I'm not arguing adding justices I'm arguing that we

06:26need to have justices that are consistent with the rule of law and with the most basic American

06:31tradition of which no person is above the law and you know I think unfortunately the dissents

06:37are right here in saying this really changes the way we think about the Supreme Court

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