Merit. he anticipated this defense, saying he had every right to speak publicly and make statement, but the former president went beyond that. smith says, quote, each of these conspiracies, which built on the widespread mistrust the president was creating about election fraud started a bedrocks function of the united states government. the federal government function, meaning it was the former president s actions, not his words, that trump is being charmed for. our friend and former u.s. attorney barbara mcconveyed put it, the first amendment threat is a loser. no right is absolute. by this logic all that osama bin laden did on 9/11 was engage in speech. axios provides this context.
david, i wanted to read you this quote from a former u.s. attorney, john fishhook, jr. quoted in the wall street journal. a claim that his sfeech was protected by first amendment and acted in good faith, the two arguments could be at odds with each other. if you say, i m a liar, and the first amendment lets me do that, that undercuts your good faith defense. talk about how this all playing out, david. i think they re using stale talking points in pushing this first amendment defense. they had this you had in case he was charged with conspiracy, but he wasn t. thee using the old talking points where they really don t apply. speech in service of a crime is not protected speech. we prosecutor a lot of people in this office who engage in criminal speech. there was a woman recently who we convicted of soliciting a hit map to try to kill her husband.
We can debate whether or not we think that s legally right or wrong, constitutionally. the point is if and to the extent donald trump is engaged in criminal activity and if you look at the articles of impeachment, what are underlying in the statements of abuse of power are charges of crime. i mean, that s what, essentially, bribery is. and they use the terms of bribery. there s a great piece that barbara mcconveyed and others participated in, saying what the crimes might be if it was ordinary citizens and so this is the only mechanism available to the american people, to know what happened and whether trump should be removed. speaking of all that, this is a group motivated largely by this dynamic of a president above the law. we re making big moves. one of them is here. donald trump s conservative c t
Huckabee sanders tells us president trump was being sarcastic when he thanked putin. meanwhile, in the russia investigation, let s look at where we ve been just over the last week or so. first you ve got robert mueller beefg up a team already heavy with lawyers very experienced in financial crimes. paul manafort switches his legal team to a firm that also has a lot of expertise in financial crimes. and about the same time we re learning that the fbi staged that dramatic predawn raid on paul manafort s home. let me bring in barbara mcconveyed a former u.s. phone in michigan to look at what all this means. so are you at all surprised by paul manafort s decision to switch legal teams, or is it clear when you look at that combination of events that i just laid out that he s convinced mueller is looking for leverage in financial documents and manafort is a target rich environment? yeah. i m not sure of the reason that he might have switched legal teams, but you can see a shift in what his
Sunday, may 21st eight seven central only on abc. in march, president trump took it upon himself to fire en masse without warning 46 sitting u.s. attorneys across the country. almost all of them. they had previously decided they were not going to fire them all at once, but for some reason they did. one of the u.s. attorneys who got fired she was there for eight years, her ten newer was high-profile including the prosecution of the underwear bomber who was ultimately sentence today life in prison. ms. mcconveyed has extensive