what do you say? i am not absolving. listen, i am not absolving the president or the miranda. i m just making more of a realistic statement of fact. the president is not going to end up going down on this here. i mean, they withdrew the subpoena. the committee did. all the outstanding subpoenas. its committee did, right, not the doj. they withdrew all the outstanding subpoenas. i don t think proving criminal culpability is a much tougher thing and proving that somebody, or suggesting that somebody did something more reprehensible. and there is a big difference between those two. i think what the department of justice is gonna try and do is get convictions. they are not gonna be able to do that with the president, they will do with other people. really quick, john, do you agree with that? i don t necessarily agree with that. i think that an overwhelming case, proof beyond a reasonable doubt is out there against trump. it is really gonna be a question of, do we prosecute a form
and ultimately, i think this analysis that merrick garland really didn t want to be the first president, first attorney general, to indict a president. didn t want to do that because he was afraid or week by because he believed in retaining a constitutional rule of law system, and is ultimately being moved towards that decision, in large part, because of the former presidents lack of any show of recalcitrance. lack of acceptance that he lost the election. lack of willingness to support democracy, even at this late stage. that merrick garland will have to ultimately view this evidence as evidence of criminal culpability, and take that very important step to indict and to prosecute. and it will be more powerful when he does it because of his hesitance. it will mean that he will have dotted all his eyes and crossed his t s. there will not be gaps in the evidence, no legal flies when he makes a decision to indict. instead, he will be so focused on preserving the strength of
mar-a-lago in various locations. these are some of our most important secrets. the top secret material is material that if released, could result in grave damage to the national security. so, overall, when you look at number, type of documents the way that they were stored, it is unprecedented and we hate to use that word because we have used so many times with the former president but i literally don t know what else to say about it. well i am still gonna ask another question get your comments on you are on whether the documents raised potential criminal culpability for donald trump, and after the affidavit, is there anyone else in trump circle who could also be at legal risk? well, second question first, there is definitely a question of whether not the people who were involved in the cover-up, of course the doj and the search warrant identifies a number of criminal charges looking at, and what is
president. there was another discussion in 2000 there are considerations that have to be in place, not just every person who ever commits a crime we would prosecute. there are other things that would be looked at as they decide whether they re going to go forward. and part of that will be if they have that information directly linking some instruction from trump versus that this was more of a a concoction and a scheme by people who just wanted to see him in power. can i ask a very basic question as a lawyer here? sure. the thing is, a lot of this didn t take place in secret, right? there aren t secret recordings and so on. the former president said it out loud, right? he said pence has got to do the right thing, the election was stolen. does that how much is in the public sphere already as relates to not just political culpability but potential criminal culpability? i think that s a great question and something that s overhanging this investigation. a lot of what you ve
when there will be so much evidence pointing to trump s criminal culpability, that it will simply be untenable for merrick garland to investigate the former president directly. especially as the list of possible crimes that he could be charged with keeps growing. . former federal prosecutor on two charges. conspiracy to defraud the united states, and obstruction of aid official proceeding. now she has raised the possibility of yet another charge she writes on twitter, quote, a strong case that can be made that trump committed five counts of manslaughter on january 6th by recklessly causing the unintended deaths of others. she adds, quote, doj, are you up yet? very good question. joining us now is barbara mcquade, former u.s. attorney for the eastern district of michigan, and now a professor at the university of michigan law school. thank you for joining us,