national political reporter. that is our show for tonight. time for the last word with lawrence o donnell. lawrence, i m gobsmacked by some of these numbers. i m just gonna leave it to you while i scratch my head. ali, you know that thing happens once in a while where one of our great guests really is getting warmed up right when we have to go to commercial break because that s life on commercial television? that happened last week with yale professor david blight, who is an expert on the 14th amendment. he knows everything about how it came to be, the congressional debate about it. we are bringing him back tonight to finish his thoughts about that. that is worth watching because the most important amendment nobody ever thought about six months ago, and this is worth staying and listening to. certainly not thought about in this context. and he will follow harvard law professor laurence tribe, also an expert on constitutional law and the 14th amendment, who will give us
lawrence, i m gobsmacked by some of these numbers. i m just gonna leave it to you while i scratch my head. aly you , know that thing happens once in awhile where one of our great guests guests really is getting warmed up right when we have to go to commercial break because that s life on commercial television. that happened last week with yale professor david blight, who is an expert on the 14th amendment. he knows everything about how it came to be, the congressional debate about it. we are bringing back tonight finishes thoughts about that. that is worth watching because the most important amendment nobody ever thought about six months ago, and this is worth staying and listening to. certainly not in this context. and he will follow harvard law professor laurence tribe, also an expert on constitutional law and the 14th amendment, who will give us his view of how the 14th amendment, how it has the power to keep donald trump off the ballot in some states. i look forw
america versus donald j trump in which donald trump is charged with the first defense contraband offered to those crimes is that he is immune from criminal prosecution because he was president of the united states. if that argument holds, van all four current criminal prosecutions of donald trump will collapse. the appeals court has set a schedule for non trump s appeal of trial judge tanya chutkan s ruling that there is no form of immunity that protects a president from criminal prosecution after he has left office. today the appeals court issued a notice to dame trump s lawyers and special prosecutor jack smith and the lawyers for each side should be prepared for questions next week in oral argument by the judges about
he was given ample opportunity to present his side of the narrative in this administrative hearing. he didn t succeed. his claim that he was denied a fair process is based on nothing in the law. he s absolutely confusing an administrative hearing of the kind that shenna bellows properly held under the law of the state of maine with a criminal trial or with a civil trial in which damages might be assessed or the property or liberty of the defendant might be at stake. hear what is at stake is whether donald trump disqualified himself. unlike many other possible disqualifications like age or birth in the united states,
pending an appeal to the superior court of maine, recognizing that she doesn t have unilateral authority to make this decision. donald trump s new main lawyer is leaning on the statutes in maine, saying that those statutes only give the secretary of state authority to do things like make sure he has enough signatures to be on the ballot, requires thousands of signatures, make sure his address is correct, kind of clerical things like that in his application to be on the ballot. and then the trump lawyer says, the secretary had no statutory authority to consider the challenges raised under section three of the 14th amendment. basically trying to treat the disqualification clause of section three, which is really central to the preservation of democracy from those who would