Conservative former federal Judge J. Michael Luttig on Sunday surprised MSNBC’s Ali Velshi with his argument that special counsel Jack Smith should definitely attempt to still bring Donald Trump to trial in the former president’s election subversion case before the 2024 election.
On the eve of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on whether Trump is immune as a former president from being prosecuted on charges that he tried to overturn the 2020 election result, Luttig admitted he currently doubted whether Trump “will ever be tried for his criminal offenses against the United States and the Constitution.”
“Now, tomorrow, we’ll know whether the Supreme Court even permits his trial for these offenses,” he said. “But if it does, the court has already made a trial of the former president practically impossible.”
Luttig explained, “At best, Jack Smith will have to decide whether to ask for the trial to begin one month before the 2024 election. It would be impossible to both begin and end Donald Trump’s trial before the November election” as “no prosecutor would want to straddle election” with the trial, he added.
“The politics of the moment will all but demand that Jack Smith forgo trial before the election and until after the election,” said Luttig. “But I would urge Jack Smith in the strongest possible terms today not to yield to that cynical partisan politics and to bring this case on for trial even in September or October, in the name of and for the sake of American democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law.”
Velshi responded, “Wow.”
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