In a fascinating AM Joy discussion, panelists described exactly how difficult it will be to get Trump out of office.
"I wrote for the Daily Beast this week the idea of potentially charging Donald Trump and the exception, the DoJ regulations about extraordinary circumstances can be present," said Dean Obeidallah.
"This is a crime about how the man got elected to office. This is election fraud. Even with the attorney-client privilege, there's a fraud exception. Even the DoJ says as a general principle, you cannot indict a sitting president, extraordinary circumstances have to be present. In this case, there are. On some level, he's an illegitimate president. The only way he's in office, to have him sit in office two years or six years, the cloud of criminality of how he got to the office is there...."
"While he puts on Supreme Court justices," Reid said.
"If in fact the significance of the Cohen flip is that he's admitting he's a participant instead a dream that was specifically about getting Trump elected, about preventing him not being elected. Doesn't then Donald Trump get right out -- you can't say he can't be prosecuted for a crime that put him in office."
"The constitution says 'I don't care.' The Constitution doesn't care about this argument," Elie Mystal. "Constitutionally speaking -- and I said this before, indictment doesn't get you where you want to go. You can indict him, convict him. He can go to jail and still be president.
"He would be president from prison. The only way is the impeachment clause or the 25th amendment. Trump can appoint Supreme Court justices from the jail.
"Again, I don't think they've thought that congress would be so partisan that they would allow a member of their own party who was a thug to remain in office," Paul Taylor said.
"If you had George Washington, he would be like, 'Who is this Mitch McConnell guy?'"
"The senate originally was not elected by the people, but chosen by the state representatives. There was idea a senate would not be this hyperpartisan. They would expect them to see the evidence. The trial goes as we know in the Senate.
"And not only that, when they were appointed, there were no political consequences. People like Mitch McConnell go -- well, if I go home to Kentucky, having voted to convict a Republican president who is giving the base, white Christian conservatives, everything they want, well then, that's the end of his political career.," Reid said.
