because they had someone serving in the biden department of justice, that is no remorse. a person who says the process is rigged, the judge is corrupt, that the district attorney didn t want to bring the case but did under political pressure, that is a person who doesn t believe he did anything wrong, as he continues to play. i expect that to be a major factor in the sentencing. lisa, obviously, we have no precedent for a former sitting president to be convicted of a felony on 34 counts. at the same time, if you re the judge, judge merchan must be thinking, okay, you know, i have to look at precedent in terms of sentencing, what is fair? so are there high-profile cases you think he may be looking at? are there, you know, other examples that we can look to to say, well, this might be be what it looks like? i mean, what would be fair? there s no precedent. we re just kind of running blind here.
democrats do. the president, it was the right thing to do, most people believe, his remarks saying we need to respect the process. now, what do fellow democrats do, the campaign, the president do in terms of driving home this conviction, as an example why donald trump is not fit for office? now, let s turn to the legal part of this and bring in former litigator and msnbc legal correspondent lisa rubin. i hope you ve had a chance to catch your breath after a frenzied stretch. we are a couple days out from the verdict now. any additional reactions now that you ve had time to sit with this as to how it went down? and give us your latest thoughts as to what the prosecution may seek in terms of penalty. let s start there. i think the prosecution, notwithstanding donald trump s efforts to say the people won t stand for his serving any jail time, i would be very surprised if the manhattan d.a. s office doesn t seek some form of jail time here. the reason is for two reasons, john. one is the
because we re going to possibly have the first witness go on on monday too. the d.a. s office said usually we d do it as a courtesy, but in this case your client over there, he s been tweeting about the witnesses and endangering them, so we won t do it. he tried several ways to make it happen. first he said i ll promise you that my client won t tweet. and there was an eruption of laughter in the overflow room, and judge merchan himself responded i don t think you can promise that. and then they said what if we made that information attorneys eyes only, meaning we won t show it to our client. joshua steinglass still demurred. eventually judge merchan said look i can t find fault with them given what has gone on here. i m not going to make them do it. we are likely barrelling towards opening statements on monday, still without an understanding of who the d.a. s first witnesses are, and nicolle, you can bet that if the d.a. s office doesn t want to tell their adversary they re probably no
could be in fact prosecuted after he left office, and now that he is out of office, he says, no, i can t be if i have been acquitted. if i ve been charged and acquitted by the senate, then there s a get out of jail free card that he cannot be prosecuted. he pounlts out that inconsistency. and this really relies on what is call the impeachment judgment clause which says that let s get into it, andrew. so the clause says if you have been impeached and you have been convicted, then you are subject afterwards to being criminally prosecuted. meaning just because you ve been cleared from office doesn t mean that you can t face criminal prosecution. donald trump says that has a negative implication. if you ve been acquitted by the senate, then you cannot be. and that is really going to be a
taken. and we have learned over the years that when donald trump says something, to believe him. i guess my question to you is, do you think he could push his supporters again to do things that are out of bounds? sure he could. i mean, let s be honest, he did it once. of course, he could do it again. i m not predicting that he will, that he will try to do that. and it is kind of interesting that in the places where indictments have come down or he s had to be booked and charged, we haven t seen big ruckus, pro-trump crowds or many crowds at all really. that s not all due to strong, you know, strict security. people haven t showed up. that s just kind of an interesting point. that doesn t mean they wouldn t at some future date. but, you know, we really are