of power. a memo that says here s who you re supposed to tell and that does include the white house. john kirby is a particularly interesting position because he used to be the spokesperson for the pentagon so he has some knowledge of the inner workings there. he is now the spokesperson for the national security council. again, president biden was told multiple days after he was in the hospital. defense secretary austin was in the hospital that he was there. but he wasn t told until today, five days later, that he had cancer. nobody at the white house knew about the cancer diagnosis until today. according to john kirby. and going back to our top story, whatever the decision from the d.c. appellate court the presidential immunity issue is likely to go to the supreme court. when it does, what precedent will they consider? joining us now, former prosecutor, john sail. he was an assistant prosecutor on the watergate case.
question. if they drag their feet, even if they say no to trump, they could put off the trial until after the election which would give trump the chance to win and perhaps try to pardon himself. i think the will attempt to act with some haste. i think not immediately will a decision come down after arguments but i to think that the court will put this on the rocket docket. hold arguments pretty quickly and try to come down with a decision within the month or two of those arguments. that could still allow time for a trial in may or june, but a tight timeline. john, you have some understanding of the precedent they might consider here. walk us through the nixon case and watergate and how this might weigh on the justices. yeah. okay, in the nixon case, the support acted very quickly, but i disagree a little bit mark.
at mar-a-lago and it s not like you know, others have not had issues before. four years ago, there were democratic senators taking part in the impeachment trial of donald trump and they made their way back. one of the democratic senators flew for a rally after one of the hearings that day and then over the course of the weekend. so senators would come back and hit the ground for about 48 hours and so for donald trump, trials only take you too far. it s a concerted decision that he has made to not campaign here, but frankly right now, his polling numbers look pretty good and he may not need to be here. vaughn, i will let you get warm. it looks horrible there. thanks. coming up, what secretary blinken wants from israel. first though, what a prosecutor thinks about donald trump s immunity case. prosecutor thinks about donald trump s immunity case. yup, that s how you business differently.
justices and you know, i hope that they re fair. then one of his lawyers went on another network and said something like president trump fought like hell to get brett kavanaugh confirmed and i sure hope he remembers that. those justice, that s going to backfire as the chief justice said, there are no trump justices. there are no obama justices. when we put on that robe, we re justices and i think that they re going to try and stay out of a political hot potato. this presupposes that the d.c. appellate court says that the president is not immune. it presupposes jack smith wins right now and donald trump appeals it to the supreme court. you re talking about the precedent that they might rely on john this court though has also not exactly had a big fealty to precedent in the past. why do you think that the precedence of nixon and
team s sleeve that we should be prepared for, john? they have a right to raise a lot of legitimate issues before judge chutkan, but those will be decided by judge chutkan and they will cause any delay. i believe in the courts. and i think look, this court with three justices appointed by trump still rejected all of his election challenge claims. so i just think the court is going to stay out of this as a political football and i think the courts are going to recognize that there s a great public interest in hearing all of the evidence. i don t think a criminal trial should be used to determine who s going to be president but i think the evidence should come out and the voters should be able to know it all and then determine whether they want that kind of a president. you asked the professor what were the founders concerned