the country, including a former president, was the subject of a hearing today in a federal courthouse in washington, d.c. attorneys for donald trump and federal prosecutors argued over trump s claim that the federal election case against him should be dismissed because everything he did in the postelection period was in his official capacity as president. the three-judge panel that is hearing the case appeared spectacle of that claim. the ex-president and jack smith were in the courtroom today. trump has been claiming that president joe biden has been forcing him to appear in court, which is not true, he did have no obligation to appear at today s hearing. trump s attorney argued that allowing the prosecution of donald trump would, quote, open a pandora s box, but the judge has pushed back on that and many of the arguments he was making. trump s lawyer also argued that the president could only be prosecuted if he was impeached and convicted by the senate first, no matter what
it s becoming a common theme in the republican party, they demand that president biden be subject to the same treatment for nothing. we saw it with the house gop impeachment inquiry into president biden, which even matt gaetz called a failure theater where house republicans basically admitted the effort was purely political tit for tat after donald trump was impeached for soliciting foreign interference in an election and then for attempt to go overthrow the government. now, in response to trump being removed from the blot in two states over his role in the january 6th insuecon, missouri secretary of state, this man, jay ashkroft, is, you guessed it, threatening to remove biden from the ballot if the supreme court doesn t intervene to keep trump from being removed. nbc news asked ashkroft how he would justify removing b from the ballot. his response, quote, let an invasion, meaning biden, letn
you re saying a president could sell military secret, could order seal team 6 to assassinate a political rival. the sale of pardons has come up but not prosecuted. it goes on like that. even the one republican appointee on the panel expressed skepticism that trump was acting in his role as president w tried to overturn the election results. i thinkt s paradoxic to say that his constitutional duty to take care that laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate criminal laws. representing the justice department, james pierce. he said that the case puts the justice system and the country in uncharted territory but that s the more reason there should be criminal
or tried and convicted of something, he will do fewer things, he or she will do fewer things and the second part, the last sentence was, if his opponent was elected. john sauer is saying, this is a trump argument he uses all the time, this is a political prosecution. well, look, and this was the one area where the judge who was on the three-member panel who was a republican appointee seemed to indicate at least a minimal level of sympathy with the trump legal team. she said you could open the flood gates potentially if you don t restrict, place some sort of legal restrictions on prosecutions of former presidents, but this is very clearly a stupendous extension of the powers of the presidency. and i would add something to your excellent introduction, in his florida documents case, he is arguing essentially that those powers transfer to his
they are all rooted, in my view, well founded charges. it is true that we have never had a president of the united states indicted, charged, criminally, certainly not for 93 counts across four different major cases that president trump, former president trump is trying to characterize all of this as baseless political theater may play to some who are his strong supporters, but i think in the end will fail. just as his 60 legal challenges to the legitimacy of the 2020 election all failed. senator, let me ask you about in february we re going to be two years into the war in ukraine. this problem about u.s. funding to ukraine is becoming very serious while the ukrainians are still trying to rally their troops and their people, they are literally begging america to not allow a domestic dispute about the border to stop the funding of congressionally approved aid.