and for those keeping score at home, it s two democratic appointees and one republican appointee who are hearing this case, which i think lends some optimism to the jack smith s team because of that makeup. it s also true, this argument for donald trump is a pretty extraordinary stretch. remember when we covered the mueller investigation. and there was much sdiscussion that there s is a justice department policy. not a law, but a policy, that says a sitting president should not be indicted. implicit in that policy, of course, he could be indicted later for something he did. that s always been the assumption. gerald ford pardoned richard nixon for his crimes in watergate. if he couldn t be prosecuted, there would be no need for a po pardon. for a former president, for conduct while in office. that s what the pardon was for. everyone assumed without the pardon, he could be prosecuted. once you are out of office, you are an order citizen like everyone else. interestingly
people can be indicted a bunch of times and still run for office. a black man can t. you just learn to be good, and in the and you benefit from that extra resilience. coates: i want to get right into all this with attorney jeffrey toobin, he is the author of the nine inside the secret world of the supreme court. as well as home grown timothy mcvay, and the rise of homegrown extremism. jeffrey i m glad you re here tonight. first of all take a step back with me. many people are wondering if tomorrow is the day that the appellate court will decide that trump committed an insurrection. that is not tomorrow is, tomorrow is about whether immunity exists for a president. what do you say? correct. what is important to remember about tomorrow, is it is a question of does donald trump have to stand trial? trump is arguing that the whole case should be thrown out, before it is even tried. which is unusual in a criminal case. because under his understanding of presidential immunity,
and the most important thing is, it doesn t have to be absolutely true, it has to be supportable. they have to prove that i was deliberately lying, which i wasn t. you know, it s so fascinating about what he just did there. yeah, it s good stuff. good stuff. it is as if he read david french s column yesterday in the new york times talking about maga man. mm-hmm. and what it takes to be a maga man. he mentioned rudy giuliani as the prime example but listed mark meadows, kari lake, listed a number of other people who may have all done different things in the past, may have all had different backgrounds, different political ideologies, but the key was once they became infected by trump, there were two things you had to do. yeah. again, david french wrote this before rudy went on and lied again last night. he said, number one, you have to lie. the key is, if you re going to follow donald trump, if you re going to be a part of donald trump s team, you ve got to be
striking a bird, and what we are learning about this. and a prom turns into a nightmare after 19 are injured when bullets start flying. we are following these developing stories and much more as they come in right here at cnn news central. a race to get out as people are rushing to get their people out of sudan. special forces have now carried out a risky operation to get the u.s. embassy officials and families out of khartoum. this is a photo of antony blinken monitoring situation. the u.s. government is warning an estimated 16,000 americans remaining there and many of them dual citizens after a large scale operation of those who want to leave is not happening now. the u.s. is facilitating evacuations in other ways. more from the white house in a moment, but sam kiley is in djibouti where the operation began. sam, this seems like a global retreat. global retreat is the exact way to put it. here we have a french air force long distance cargo plane. that has been, we u
you are in the cnn newsroom. i m paula reed in washington. jim acosta is off tonight. former president donald trump is stirring the political pot with claims he expects to be arrested on tuesday. his campaign is already fundraising off that allegation and new tonight, trump lawyer blames the media and the district attorney for trump s comments. in a statement to cnn he says no one tells us anything which is very frustrating. president trump is basing his response on press reports and the fact this is a political prosecution and the da leaks things to the press instead of communicating to the lawyers as they should. now the former president has not stated why he expects to be arrested as the investigation continues into hush money payments made to porn star stormy daniels but trump s legal team has got no word from the manhattan da s office about the timing of any possible indictment. we also know that at least one witness is still expected to testify before the grand jury on